


Sins Don't Go to Heaven

by Ranowa



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Dark, Gen, Hughesmunculus, Illustrated, Lust!Hughes, Paralysis, Possessive Behavior, Roy has such a bad time here i am sorry, Torture, onesided Lust/Roy hints, suggested past Maes Hughes/Roy Mustang, welcome to angstville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 14:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11830719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: A far more ruthless Father decides to remove Roy Mustang as a threat after he kills Lust.





	1. And All the King's Horses and All the King's Men, Couldn't Put Roy Together Again

**Author's Note:**

> Gift!fic for maeshughesofficial on tumblr, partly for all the ammazzing fanart he's drawn for me, and partly for running such an awesome blog and inspiring this, with his awesome Lust!Hughes content. Thanks, maeshughesofficial!!! You all should go check it out, if you like feeling painful things and being hurt by things that you love ;_; ...I do apologize, for taking his lovable, adorkable Lust!Hughes, and creating this monster instead- and the absolutely obscene length T_T
> 
> As a sidenote, I’ll leave warnings out for now, just because there really could be so many of them, so I’ll only say here that this is really not kind towards disabled individuals. All I’ll say is just remember it’s a homunculus speaking, not me. Anywho... enjoy angstville :)
> 
> Now illustrated! By maeshughesofficial on tumblr, and a wonderful ao3 guest <3

“He doesn’t remember you, you know.”

The human keeps his eyes shut. Envy, in response, prowls forwards a little closer like a panther cat, and beams a sick, sick smile.

“You’ve realized that, haven’t you? I wanted to give you a little time so you could talk to him and see it on your own... you didn’t get it at first. But you see it now, don’t you? He’s doesn’t even have a clue who you are.”

The human still does not so much as look at his tormentor. This does not, however, make Envy any less gleeful.

“How long did it take for you to understand, Colonel?” Envy spreads his arms wide, mouth still stretched into a delighted cackle of joy. His expression is ecstatic, and his eyes, bright. “The first time you saw him, once you realized what we’d done... you screamed for hours. It was _delicious._ Do you remember that, human? How... beautifully _long..._ you screamed for?” There’s a short pause, and a wordless one. The silence stretches onwards in the tiny little cell, so eerily quiet the only sound to be heard is the strangely steady pattern of the human’s breaths.

And then, Envy smiles again.

“I remember,” the sin murmurs, and then, he changes.

He grows tall, flat planes of a man’s body molding into the curves of a woman’s, black clothes melting into dark blue, and dark hair softening to a flowing gold. A woman, now, she pushes a hand into the human’s hair, and leans so close her lips brush against his forehead. “I was bored, and so I sat out there and listened the whole time. I timed you, Colonel Mustang, _sir._ I timed how long it took for you to stop screaming, when you realized what we had done with that rotting corpse you call a friend.”

She kisses the human again. The human sits as cold and still as a block of marble.

A faint shudder of revulsion thrums under his pale skin, just a momentary tremble of disgust- and then it is gone, and he is as cold and motionless as one dead.

And then Envy is changing again, though it’s a little subtler this time; the long, flowing hair stays blonde, just weaves itself into a braid, and the blue uniform drapes downwards into a red coat instead. He shrinks until he could be but a child, and the soft caress in the human’s hair becomes a violent hand yanking it back till the neck just might snap. “Isn’t that pathetic? I thought you were supposed to be the big, strong military officer! I thought you were supposed to be the tough one- oh, what’s it that the pipsqueak calls you again... bastard, right?” And his face contorts into an almost poisonous grin of glee.

Once again, the human’s only response is the smallest shudder of disgust. He doesn’t react even when Envy tugs his head back so severely his neck almost breaks.

“But, now...” he purrs, “ _tell me,_ human... how long did it take for you to realize it was not just his body that we took?”

The human holds very, very still. There’s not even a shudder, now.

“I listened then, too, you know. Like I said, I was bored- I wanted to see how long it took for you to figure out exactly what we’d done. I listened to you talk to him, over and over, trying to turn him into someone that you thought wasn’t gone... but you understand, now. Don’t you? _”_

There’s a soft, slippery sort of grin- and then, Envy’s appearance begins to change for one final time.

“How many times did you try to get him to remember before you realized that he could not?” The red coat morphs back into the blue military uniform from before, impeccable in its neatness and order. Envy presses even closer to the human, hands curling around his useless wrists to pin them with his face right in his. “How many times did you try to pry and see what was underneath the surface until you realized there was _nothing?_ That- _”_ His hair darkens and shortens, the blond braid blurring away into a scruffy sort of military cut... a military cut that is _familiar._ “That-“ Envy pauses again, and that sick, sick smile of his slowly slithers, and then, it grows.

“That our homunculus had been reborn, and your silly friend is gone... _Roy-boy._ ”

The human eyes remain closed. For all the effort Envy has gone through to become someone he surely should know, the man does not even see it. This time, he holds himself so still and emotionless there’s not even a twitch of a shudder through his broken form.

It’s as if he can not even hear Envy speak.

But, at long last, he tilts his head gently, long hair falling over his shut eyes, and the sin finally gets his answers.

“What do you want, Envy?”

Envy pauses. But the sick smile doesn’t fade, and in his newly green eyes, still, is the sure, doubtless belief that he has won.

“Do you want for me to scream again? To swear vengeance?” Two dark eyes slit open, though they remained shadowed by black hair, sunken and dead as a corpse’s. They meet Envy’s, but are so cold and distant he might as well be staring at the wall. “Do you just want to gloat, is that it? Are you so proud of what you have done that you must brag about it to a captive audience? Or... do you want me to cry? Is that it, Envy?”

His voice is just as dead as his eyes. For one who speaks of screaming and crying, this human sounds as if he has never so much as experienced a single emotion in his life.

Finally, Envy’s smile fades, but it’s only by a little. He’s still proud of himself; this is easy to see. He’s still having an exorbitant amount of fun here, toying with his prisoner like a cat would a mouse, standing over him in the form of another. He’s still almost deliriously happy. But the sick smile fades, just a little, and in it’s place, there eats a calm, cool sense of superiority and triumph.

“I want,” he says quietly, “to know how many times you tried to make him remember you before you realized there was nothing left of your most _beloved_ friend for him to remember.”

Still, the human betrays absolutely nothing.

“You’re the one who killed him, aren’t you,” he says softly, after a long silence.

Despite the words, it is not a question.

Envy throws his head back, his dark head with shorter hair and green eyes and a strangely bright smile, and he laughs.

Turning, Lust proceeds back into the shadows of the hall, unseen by them both, and silently withdraws away. He hears Envy continue to laugh, but whatever words that are said between them any more are now missed.

The human’s high-pitched, piercing scream of agony is not missed, just a minute later, once Envy has left the room, but Lust continues to walk away, all the same.

* * *

His name is Roy Mustang.

Lust does not like him.

It is the principle of the thing, he supposes. It is because he is Lust the homunculus, and yet he is stuck underground babysitting their prisoners because he is outnumbered and has no recourse to escape; a prisoner just as much as their humans. (Envy, in particular, takes great pleasure in this.) It is because he is Lust the Lascivious, and meant to be desired. He is _Lust_ ; every quality of him is designed to be wanted, to be desired, to be _loved_ by these lowly humans, and yet Roy Mustang denies him this, and he doesn’t understand why.

It is because, quite simply, the human is rude, and therefore, a waste of his time.

Now, Lust is not unreasonable; he understands Roy Mustang is a rather unwilling guest of theirs, so he expects some complaints. Granted, they really should be directed more towards Envy, who is the one who loves to torment him, and not himself- but still, he understands. He does wish this stubborn refusal to even look him in the eye, because it has gotten _weary_ , would end... he is Lust, after all. Humans should all be groveling at his feet for his attention. They have no right to spit in his face.

But Roy Mustang can not grovel at his feet, and by the way he still is so very stubborn, Lust knows he would not, even if he could get out of bed. Roy Mustang can not cling to him and beg the way humans ought to, and by the way he still glares and growls and pitches a fit, Lust knows he would not, even if he still had the hands to cling and beg with. Roy Mustang can not do anything anymore, but they need him alive, and so that is the task that he has been tasked with. Keep the human alive.

The ungrateful, irritating, stubborn human alive.

Lust dislikes it greatly.

“You _know~”_ he begins, and is none too gentle shoving the next bite of food into the human’s mouth. He can’t wipe at the refuse left behind on his chin, not unless he makes a blunt attempt with the stumps of his wrists; Lust never ceases to find the hilarity in this. “You are a _rude_ human. So very rude.”

“Is that so,” Roy Mustang says dully. Black, dead eyes flicker over to him, and in them he sees nothing.

“Yes~” he sing-songs again, purely because the human hates it. He tries to hide it, but Lust can still see the slight tensing of his jaw, the little grinding of his teeth, the darkening of his eyes, and he loves it. He starts to hum in his throat, because the human hates that, too. “You know what my siblings tell me, human? They tell me _you_ are the one who killed my last life. If anything, I should be the one to be rude to you! But instead- all of this. Downright unpleasant to be around.” He shakes his head, shoving in the next bite. He shakes his head again. Lust, spoonfeeding a human. Ridiculous.

Roy sits very, very still. He blinks at him, and there is still nothing to be found in his eyes. He looks to be as dead, Lust thinks, dead just like all of his siblings; they with a thousand souls inside them and yet distinctly lacking the quality of life. He looks like this all of the time. Envy is the one who cultivated this strange death stare out of him; before Envy had intervened, Lust had never even seen it- but he is treated to it now. Every single time, the human looks back at him with such little emotion it’s as if his face was carved from dead stone.

It is as strange as it is disturbing.

At last, the human does smile faintly, but even as lacking in real interaction as Lust is, he knows the smile is a fake one. Just a cold, sardonic little twist of his pale mouth, a slight shift in what was otherwise a corpse’s stare. “Did they say why I killed her?” the human asks, and swallows. “Can you remember?”

No, Lust does not remember, but he does not, has not ever, figured it very important. He’s never even really tried to remember it. To be a homunculus is, quite necessarily, to cavort with death; it is what Father orders; it’s never been of any interest what exactly led to any of his previous incarnations’ deaths. “What is there to remember?” he asks instead, flashing his most charming, careless grin. “You are an unpleasant human- and I am _Lust._ I _exist_ to be loved- to you humans, I am irresistible. I am heaven, to you insects. Whatever happened, it was clearly all instigated by _you,_ my distinctly unpleasant human friend.” He slaps at his leg, but it’s not anywhere near as rude as all the glares Roy Mustang loves to treat him to- he can not feel the blow.

There’s a short beat of silence. For just a moment, Lust can see something in his dark eyes other than the cold detachment of death.

Then, it is gone, hidden as Roy Mustang closes his eyes. His face is carefully impassive, white features etched in monotony, but he’s getting to know the human a little better, now, and Lust knows him well enough at last to see the whisper of pain that now haunts him.

“You were loved, once,” he says at last. “By many.”

His lower lip trembles, and he bites down on it hard, so hard Lust can almost smell the blood.

And the moment is gone, and the dead facade of a dead, dead man is back. Dark eyes slit open in an unforgiving stare, his jawline clenched in cold anger as he murmurs, “And I am _not_ your friend,” and that is that.

No explanation comes. None _ever_ come for this human’s strange, cryptic comments. He just says them sometimes, little thrown out tidbits that there is more to this than what has been said, tiny flickers of haunted pain where before there was none, but Roy Mustang never explains, and Lust never asks. He doesn’t really care, whatever Roy Mustang’s thing, or problem, or history, perhaps, with him is. He’s simply an irritating human, a little buzzing fly in his life, and is not worth the time nor energy it would take to understand.

Lust sighs momentarily, sitting back loosely on the bed, making a little show of splaying out like a seductress and continuing to hum in his throat. He looks down at the tray of half-eaten food; shrugs; he’s eaten enough not to starve to death, and he supposes that’s all that really matters to him. He sighs again, glares back at the human, the man not even looking at him any longer, and feels his face contort into a snarl. “You,” he hisses, and points with a single claw. “I do not like you.”

The man smiles faintly again, like there’s a joke that only he gets, but his eyes are left closed. “Is that so.”

Because he is Lust, and he is meant to be loved, and _this_ human, this lowly cripple worth nothing even by humanity’s standards denies him. He hates him for it. “Yes,” he snarls again, “that is _so,”_ and with that he yanks himself off the bed and out of the cell, because Roy Mustang irritates him, and what he wants now is to be somewhere that he is loved like he should be, and not with this cripple that refuses.

He hears the human laugh quietly again behind him as the door slams shut. He ignores it, because it doesn’t sound all that sane.

* * *

Envy likes to play with Roy Mustang a lot. Lust doesn’t quite understand, truth be told. He’s watched, a few of their little playdates. It’s all very brutal and bloody, Envy playing a wild tiger to his hapless prey, and Roy Mustang- pretty much just sitting there defenseless. There’s clearly history between them, an animosity that is far more than just a homunculus and human, but whatever it is, Lust doesn’t know.

It’s very... indelicate, he supposes. Perhaps it’s just not in his nature to understand. He’s Lust, after all; he enjoys making humans _want_ to serve him- not just forcing them to do it. He doesn’t really see the fun in toying with him when it seems to just be Envy taunting and playing with a helpless human- but, to each their own, he supposes.

He watched, at first. He found the different faces Envy wore for the human intriguing; many times a blonde woman with sharp eyes, standing there in a military uniform, and other times a red-coated child with brilliant hair and eyes, hair and eyes like gold. He doesn’t recognize them, but he can see that the human does. He can see that the human, as silent and cold-eyed as he is, hates it.

Lust stops watching, when the face Envy wears to taunt Roy Mustang stops being those, and changes, most peculiarly, to become Lust’s own.

He doesn’t watch, but he still has ears, and he knows that whenever Envy wears that face, it’s the easiest for him to break down Roy Mustang’s walls and get him to scream.

* * *

The other prisoner, he doesn’t mind as much.

He does wish he wasn’t such a sad sack, though.

Doctor Tim Marcoh does not glare at him, or yell, or make vaguely cryptic comments that irritate him though he doesn’t understand why. Tim Marcoh also does not need to be spoonfed, and can stand on his own, and all he’s needed to do is stand there and watch him, so he doesn’t mind him.

Marcoh also doesn’t worship him, like he’s meant to be, but, he’s not really trying that hard to win this one’s affections, so he doesn’t mind as much, with him. He could win them, if he wanted to. No one resists him.

No one except for that cripple, anyway.

“You,” he says, and points down at the doctor. “I like you.”

Marcoh pauses in his meal, dull eyes lifting up to meet his. Dull, not dead, like Mustang’s. “Thank you.” He returns his gaze down to the tray.

Lust scowls briefly. “It’s only that you don’t fight me,” he finds himself going on, though he’s not really sure why he feels like he must justify himself to a mere human. “Our other prisoner does... I don’t understand it. I mean,” he gestures about the small space, “I get we’re holding you prisoner and all- but we could be _far_ crueler hosts than this! Besides, I’m merely following orders. You’re soldiers, yes? You should understand the conc-“

“Your other prisoner?” Marcoh interrupts suddenly, jerking his gaze up again. “...Roy Mustang?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs carelessly; raises a hand to look over the smooth, seductive flesh. “You his friend?”

“I- no. I...” The doctor bows his head, face shadowing with contrition, then abruptly drops the fork down with a clatter of metal on metal. “That’s not...”

Lust does not care about a human’s problems, and he most certainly doesn’t care, if it relates to Roy Mustang. Already bored here- that’s at least one thing Roy Mustang has going for him; he’s never boring- Lust begins to hum in his throat, waiting impatiently for the human to finish his meal so he can leave, and hunt down someone who worships him like he should be instead. The sooner he can get out of here and entertain himself with some real groveling, the better.

Then suddenly, the doctor is on his feet, hands clasped before him like he’s begging. Unlike Roy Mustang, this one wears his heart on his sleeve, and is brutally honest in all his words and eyes; Lust doesn’t need to hunt on his face to know this is a sincere request born from what he can only describe as anguish. “Please, homunculus- please, can you speak to him for me? I’d like to apologize. Him, what’s happened to him...” The doctor swallows, and honest anguish twists across his face again. “It’s my fault.”

Lust hums again. Ah... intriguing. So the human here blames himself, for Roy Mustang’s pitiful state. His hands, his legs, maybe his entire imprisonment all together? Lust doesn’t know, and he can’t really say he’s interested- but, he’s not mind-numbingly bored anymore, at least! “Is that so,” he drawls, and nearly cracks up; impersonating Mustang is fun, even if not to his face.

His efforts, however, are lost on Marcoh, who merely nods and begs again, and because he is meant to be put up on a pedestal and worshipped, and this begging satisfies him, he entertains him a moment longer. “Yes,” the doctor says earnestly, so earnestly his voice nearly cracks. “When they took him, Envy, he... made me. I’m a doctor- Envy made me cut off his hands. He made me paralyze him. They wanted him useless, after what he did they said they had make it impossible for him to fight, I had no choice, I-...” He stops for a moment, just a moment, and hiseyes darken quietly, softening with tired shame. Lust wonders, briefly, if that’s what guilt looks like. “...I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and he’s never heard a declaration more honest.

This _is_ of some interest to him now, albeit only slightly- this was all before his time. As long as he has known him, Roy Mustang has been a handless cripple. He wonders why Roy was so dangerous his siblings felt the need to take him out of action, and yet this doctor is still left to do as he pleases. Relatively. Perhaps it’s something to do with Tim Marcoh being a harmless doctor and Roy responsible for his previous incarnation’s death.

Marcoh hesitates, something unsettlingly worried on his face shifting. “He’s... a sacrifice, too. Isn’t he?”

Lust grins sharply, all teeth and no bite. “As much as you are, my friend,” and sashays right out the door.

* * *

He passes on the doctor’s apology.

Mostly just because he’s curious.

Mostly just because Roy Mustang makes him curious.

His reaction is less than fun.

Roy looks at him. He blinks at him. He looks down at his useless legs. “Oh,” he says, and smiles emptily. “I was wondering how they’d had that done.”

Then, after a brief, still moment of silence, he just lies back down awkwardly, and closes his eyes again.

Lust stares.

That’s it? That’s _it?_

“You don’t even _care_ that your friend did this to you?” he pries in disbelief. Can Roy Mustang do _nothing_ right? Oh, he hates the man, he hates him. All he wants is a simple reaction, something more than just a momentary flash of revulsion or anger or pain- but hearing his friend is directly responsible for taking away his hands and his legs has not worked out even an iota of the proper response. It’s almost infuriating. “I realize you’re an emotionally stunted child, but, you do realize this is the most disappointing moment of the century for me, human,” he purrs.

The human chuckles quietly. His eyes stay shut. “I’m afraid it would be rather hypocritical of me to react otherwise.” He pauses, and his lower lip trembles again, just the softest break in the cold facade. His face gets that look, that look like he’s swallowing pain and something else Lust doesn’t quite recognize in him. It’s strange and unsettling, and he watches the shift, watches his cold face go painfully restrained, the way one of the bruises from Envy’s latest visit looks on his pale skin when he goes so utterly controlled the pain he knows is lurking there is absolutely hidden. “A friend of mine was paralyzed, trying to kill... Lust. It’s where you homunculi got the idea to do this to me in the first place.” He hesitates, and there- there is that soft hint of pain again, shadowing his always haunted face. “He... forgave me for it, despite it being my responsibility.”

Lust scowls again.

So close, to cracking that horrible mask of his and wrenching out the pain and servility he wants...

So close, and then Roy Mustang had to go and ruin it.

“ _I_ am Lust,” he points out, almost growling. He’s noticed that- how strangely reluctant the human is to refer to him by his name. How reluctant he is to acknowledge him, and to submit to him, first, he must acknowledge him.

This time, the way the human’s face contorts, with tired pain and old regret and many, many things too anguished to recognize, is delightful.

“I know,” he whispers back, and his voice cracks.

Lust, however, scowls at him still. He loves getting reactions out of him, any kind at all, but he still doesn’t understand anything about this human. He never reacts the way he’s _supposed_ to, he never gives explanations as to why, he never does the right thing, and, for all that Lust tries and tries and tries, the stubborn human refuses to do anything but stymie him. Moreover, all he _really_ wants is for Roy Mustang to adore him the way humans are meant to do, that’s all this is- is that so devastatingly hard to ask? Surely Roy Mustang can just swallow his pride for once in his silly, human life, and do what he’s told-

But he never, ever does.

Even now, Roy Mustang does nothing but what he has always done: sit there, head down, with face as cold and expressionless as marble.

For the third time in as many minutes, Lust scowls.

He’s done with this.

“I don’t like you,” he repeats, hissing the words out past gritted teeth, and traces a single claw over the bruise- just deep enough to draw delicious blood- and turns to leave.

“Jean Havoc.”

Lust comes to a stop.

Curiouser and curiouser, it seems.

Slowly, a quiet curiosity twitching in his hands, he turns back around and- well, would you look at that. Roy Mustang, Oh Most Stubborn and Defiant One, the human who earns his bread and butter by refusing to so much do him the courtesy of the time of day, is looking at him. Right in the eyes and everything, no hostility, no glaring, just looking him in the eyes and offering it to him like this eye contact is his most precious gift.

Lust is almost touched, and almost takes it as a victory, before he remembers that humans are _supposed_ to be such weak-willed, needy things that they beg and plead for the privilege of even touching him. He is not supposed to have to work and needle and torment to get so much as a look in the eye.

Even though Roy Mustang, it seems, has become his one and only exception, this truly is unbecoming of him.

And yet... the way he looks at him now... not needy, not longingly, not in desire, not the plentiful, desperate need humans give to him like he’s their oasis in a baking desert of anguish...

No. That is not how Roy Mustang looks at him.

Roy Mustang looks at him as if so much as holding his gaze is like a knife to his gut.

And yet, he holds his gaze anyway.

Hmm. Intriguing.

“Jean Havoc,” the human says again, voice wavering, and that pained, indescribable look in his eyes is mirrored desperately in his voice. “That’s the man who got hurt, trying to kill... her. The last you.” He swallows; Lust can see his throat jump. “I... could you tell me what happened to him, please?”

Well- this is interesting, now.

Lust may not be the best at reading human emotion, but he reads human _need_ very will. It’s what he lives on, after all. He can see when humans want something, and he can see when humans need something- and right now, for the first time in a very long while, Roy Mustang is looking at him like he needs something.

For reasons he may never understand, Roy Mustang needs to know this like he needs to breathe.

Lust doesn’t know Jean Havoc, and doesn’t care to.

He also doesn’t know Roy Mustang, and doesn’t care to.

He _does_ , however, find that he cares, just enough, to progress this a little further, because he’ll see this lame cripple love him someday like all the rest, and the way to do that is to be Lust, and give him what he needs.

And, well, he’s got nothing better to do.

Lust leaves without looking back at him, humming loudly, and rolling his ass a little just as he slips smoothly around back outside, knowing the human is watching, knowing he can’t help himself. He grins sharply once the door is shut, inordinately pleased with himself, but even as he locks it, he hears, very faintly, a muffled sob.

* * *

He mentions it casually on his next visit, spoonfeeding the cripple yet again and humming, just because it annoys him.

“Jean Havoc’s retired,” he says breezily, and pushes the next bite of food in.

Roy nearly chokes, sputtering and stunned. He stares at him, wide-eyed, and, well, Lust gets it, a little- he said it out of the blue like this for shock value- and it _does_ gratify him, to finally see him reacting to something the way he’s supposed to.

“Just thought you should know,” he goes on, and lifts the fork again.

After several stunned moments, Roy shudders and sits back, wiping at his face with the stump of one arm. “Retired?” he says, and then, for the first time since he has known him, he smiles, and means it. His face stretches into a very soft smile, his eyes warm, and he looks so relieved, he does not and will never understand.

“I’m so glad,” he murmurs. “They took me from our hospital room. They knocked me out, so I... I didn’t know if they’d... killed him or not.”

And that’s it.

Lust takes a moment to just relax and enjoy it. The quiet adoration and love in his expression, the first time he’s ever seen it from him though he works it out of so many others... even if, in Roy Mustang, it’s not for him. Someday, it will be.

Someday, it will be.

* * *

Homunculi don’t need to sleep, as a rule.

They don’t need anything, really. They are perfected humanity, as Pride likes to say: they have what can almost be called human bodies, and with all the benefits that entails, but don’t need any weaknesses or daily necessities that actual humans have. Food is a waste of time, water is boring, pain is hardly even a nuisance, sleep is dull.

But, Lust is trapped underground, and with nothing better to do.

So he kills the hours, and he sleeps.

And it’s only then, that he discovers something else about himself: he dreams.

Dreams of things he does not understand.

Most often, he dreams of a human woman, one with short, honeyed hair and kind, green eyes. She is mediocre, in every degree. He’s dreamed of her enough to picture her in every detail, and she is _dull._ Not that this means much- humans are, by definition, the dullest creatures to walk this world. But even among them, there are standards of excellence, standards of lowliness, and standards of mediocrity. Roy Mustang, a cripple- and a hateful one, at that- fits their standards of lowliness.

This woman is mediocre.

And yet?

He dreams of her, night after night. She is dull, she is boring, she is spectacularly unworthy- and yet, he still sees her.

She haunts his mind, and in some ways, she frustrates him even more than the cripple. The cripple, at least, he understands why he draws his attention. The cripple is annoying and disgusting, but the cripple _hates_ him, and, in a world where he exists to make humans want to serve his every need, Roy Mustang is an anomaly in an otherwise very boring existence. This woman isn’t an anomaly. This woman doesn’t fight his affections. She does not fight _him._ No, no, in his dreams, the woman is nothing but kind. She dotes on him, and loves him as he deserves. She is worth nothing more than any of the dozens of women he’s seduced like a mouse straight into a cat’s teeth; there is no reason for him to dream of her.

And, yet, he does.

Roy Mustang interests him because he denies him. This woman makes him uncomfortable, like a nagging itch somewhere deep, deep inside him that he can not scratch, because she does _not..._ and yet, there is something in him that wants her anyway.

She haunts him, and when he realizes that, he tries very hard to never think of her again. He does not succeed in the slightest.

This woman, however, is not alone, in the humans that haunt him in the night.

There is a child, one that looks so much like the woman she might be her daughter. She is small, and looks even younger than Pride, but unlike the oldest homunculus, he knows this child is not hiding darkness and calculated murder under her skin. She’s as innocent as innocent comes, just a tiny human capable of nothing the homunculi might want and nothing that the sin of Lust might need. She dotes on him, too, dotes on him just like the woman, but this time, he is confuse even more. He has no interest in one so young. He has no interest in the kind of love she might offer him. He has no interest in _anything_ a child might have _whatsoever._

Why does he see this child? What _possibly_ could the spawn of mediocrity hold for him?

He asks his Father about it one day, driven purely by boredom, curiosity... and the image of that smiling, green-eyed woman and her child.

“Oh. You dream of humans?” Father asks dismissively. His gaze never rises from the map of Amestris in his lap. His words sound like they barely even qualify as an afterthought “Those are memories of your old human, I’d surmise- the host body we made you from. All of my children have them, when I choose to craft you from that inferior race.” He shrugs blithely, marking something down on the map. “It is nothing to be concerned with, Lust.”

His old human...

Sometimes- very, very rarely- he dreams of another.

Roy Mustang.

The cripple does not hate him, in his dreams. The cripple does not look at him with cold, angry eyes, does not refuse him his affections, does not sit in bed as a useless sack to frustrate him and infuriate him day after day.

No...

In his dreams, Roy Mustang loves him.

Lust tries not to sleep much, after he realizes that.

* * *

His days pass much like that; trapped underground, with only his dreams, the humans, Father, and occasionally Envy for company. His dreams frustrate him to no end, Father bores him, Envy is a smug little shit, and the humans are what the humans are. Tim Marcoh a depressing, dull creature that is almost too sad to exist, and is of extremely little interest to him once he learns he has to little to offer on the subject of Roy Mustang.

And, Roy Mustang-

Continues to stymie him.

His memories slowly come back, of his last incarnation. He remembers a century of seducing humans on his Father’s command; military officers, mostly, scamming and sleeping his way around the ranks, and sometimes to set off border skirmishes as an excuse for bloodshed. He remembers his birth, the same as it was this time. He also remembers his death, paralyzing Jean Havoc and attack from a cold-eyed, very different Flame Alchemist than the one he knows- the one man she couldn’t bring to his knees.

He finds it ironic.

It’s not just him. His previous existence, too, had failed to master Roy Mustang. This human, this strange, difficult, unusual human refuses him in every form, and, Lust thinks, this irritates him even more.

No more.

He will master him this time.

“Who is Maes Hughes?” he asks him one day, and once again times it just so that he chokes.

It’s not the kind of choking he’s used to, but, he supposes, he’ll take it, for now.

Roy stares at him, eyes wide, then squirms as best he can back on the bed in a way to just get as far away from him as possible. He chokes on air. His face twists and there’s that beautiful pain again, that beautiful and familiar pain that he always gets from him just before he shuts down.

But he doesn’t shut down, this time.

“W-where did you h-hear that- that _name?”_

Lust raises an eyebrow, and contains the little grin that wants to contort its way across his entire face.

The desperate light in his eyes, and the desperate pain in his voice, is not what he’d imagined, in asking that question- but oh, is it just what he’d wanted.

He takes a moment to play with the human, wrapping the arm keeping him upright even tighter around his shoulders while walking the fingers of his other hand slowly up his chest, nails just sharp enough to pinprick the skin with each landing, dotting his claws against Envy’s scars. “Oh?” he needles, provokes, laughs; he tilts his gaze up to meet Roy’s, as sultry and seductive as he can make it, complete with a leer of a grin to boot. “Nowhere, dear, nowhere... It’s just, that’s what you asked me, right before you killed me, isn’t it? _Did you kill Maes Hughes.”_ He laughs again, and greatly enjoys the stricken look it brings to his face. “That’s why my last life died- isn’t it?”

The speech was one purely designed to hurt. Every word, every touch, every smile, calculated just so to worm past Roy Mustang’s crumbling defenses and shatter him from the inside out. He wants to make the human submit to him, and to do that, he’s realized, first, he must break him.

First, he must make him hurt.

So, he tries it- and Lust is not disappointed.

He hurts. Roy Mustang winces, he gasps, he shudders, he _hurts,_ and each and every vulnerability and concession to the pain- he loves them all. He loves infiltrating his way in past the human’s walls and dragging the human right back out with him. Oh, the human may not love him, not yet- though he _will-_ but this, right now, forcing the thing out past his ugly mask and showing the pain Lust _knows_ is real...

He loves it.

He loves this, he imagines, more than he’ll ever low the submission he knows will one day become his.

It takes the human a heartbeat to recover enough to do anything but sit there in shock. The anguish is almost glowing in his pale visage, his face twisted and black eyes etched with a pain so deep and primal it’s almost inhuman. Lust almost starts to think this was all it would take to break him, just the utterance of the name _Maes Hughes_ and a smile- but at last he recovers, some of that old, cold mask of his reigning back over the wounded figure and painting its lies over the honesty of his anguish, transforming him back the stubborn, stubborn human he’s fought with for so long. Roy Mustang shakes his head, shakes it so his hair shadows his eyes the tired pain, and tilts his face away from him, shoulders slumping first- and this whole body after them; his whole body slumping in exhausted defeat. He looks just as cold, unfeeling, and dead as ever. “You remember your... old life, then,” he murmurs, and his words come out quietly strangled.

Lust smirks.

He’s not going to let himself be turned away just yet.

“You killed me for Maes Hughes,” he says, and leans forward so close his face is right in his, just an inch away. His fingers trail along his chest again, tracing old scars and new wounds like a lover’s caress; it’s the only way he knows how. Roy Mustang shudders again, not in hot desire but cold disgust, and his smile grows. “What was that for, hmm? Did you love him? Was he your lov~er~?” And because Roy still looks stricken, and he adores that look, he continues; he climbs up onto the bed, loose and long-limbed, and puts a hand on either side of his face. Soft, supple, human; desirable only because he refuses him. He’ll make him want him. He’ll taunt and torment and seduce until this pathetic human has _melted_ in his beautiful hands. Lust hums to him, loud and insistent, and then- “That’s it, isn’t it? You miss your dead lover, and blame me for it. _That’s_ why you hate me.”

  
art by the lovely [maeshughesofficial](https://maeshughesofficial.tumblr.com/)

This time, however, his words do not have the effect he’d been waiting for.

Some of that poignant sorrow and anguish, bled across his face like spilled paint, fades. It drifts away like flotsam, and while some of that old, haunted pain is still there, it’s no longer tearing him apart from the inside out. Lust’s words, no matter their intention, had become a balm to that pain, and from them has been born something else, instead.

Something else that he thinks is sorrow.

Roy looks at him for a long time, not even an inch away, face still obscured by his hands but that dark, unreadable stare still boring into his own. His eyes scream so much that he doesn’t understand, and he still does not understand, when the cripple, very slowly, raises one arm to rest the stump against his. He looks like he’d be stroking his face, his arm if he could, and he has no words for the look in his dark eyes.

Lust sits perfectly still, and Roy Mustang, too, is now frozen where he sits, one wrist stump resting close against his own.

In his eyes is still the delicious pain that Lust so loves to draw from him, but this time, so much of it has been overwhelmed by sorrow, not even he can bear it all.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers at last: but it is not to Lust. “Oh, Maes. I am so, so sorry.”

He shuts his eyes, and though he is then silent, Lust still sees him grit his teeth tight and clench his jaw and his throat jump, as he fights to swallow back a heartbroken sob.

* * *

The human starts to scream in his sleep.

Sometimes he yells about fire and a war called Ishval. Sometimes he moans the name Maes Hughes, and _I’m sorry_. Sometimes he is silent, but wakes with a start and will then sob in the dark.

Lust listens, and ponders.

* * *

This is how the days pass.

He is still relegated underground, and until the eclipse comes this is how it must be. His face is recognizable to the humans above ground, Envy tells him, and it is simply best for him to remain hidden. He does still slip out sometimes, hunting down young, delectable housewives to fawn over him whenever he gets restless, but they do not hold his interest. It’s not their lustful desire for him that he really wants; it’s far too easy to earn for it to be worth much of anything to him, and he discards the women and their affections as quickly as he reels them in.

This is the reason, he determines, he still thinks at all about Roy Mustang.

It’s only the fact that he refuses him that makes him care. The women he seduces; they are like taking candy from a baby. It’s _boring._ But this human- it’s like trying to win over a blushing virgin, her body the prize, except he’s done that three times already this month and it is not at all as difficult as it sounds. Roy Mustang, however-

He does not understand why Roy refuses him, and that is the only reason he wants him.

It’s the hunt that he really enjoys, and this time, it’s the hunt that makes it thrilling.

Envy finds it hilarious, and spends hours on end teasing him about his obsession.

Lust stabs him through the heart, hurls him through the wall, and stomps away the moment the word crosses his mouth.

Obsession.

Obsession.

He, Lust. Obsessed with a human? A crippled, dull, dying human?

Ridiculous.

He glares into the darkness, stalking straight past Roy Mustang’s cell, and hates that even though he can have all the love and adoration a man could possibly ever want, all it ever makes him think about is that cold-eyed cripple that will sometimes touch his face with his ugly lack of a hand and call him Maes.

* * *

Roy... cracks, a little.

It’s not much. Not for Lust. Never for Lust. No; for Lust, his facade of a cold smile and dead eyes never even shifts; he’s stubborn to a fault, he’ll give him that. It was only in the beginning he’d been able to crack that mask- not anymore, it seems. Now, now that Roy is used to the torment, he has perfected his cold, dead stillness, Lust is no longer able to work those glimmers of desperate pain out of his victim.

But he’s stubborn only for Lust, and when Lust is gone, lingering outside to eavesdrop instead- he hears things.

He starts to laugh sometimes. Out of nowhere, for no reason at all, hysterical chuckles or insane bursts of maddened hilarity. Laughing to himself, in an empty and silent room and over the remains of a life that is broken and ruined. Other times he’ll sob, but the sobs make sense- it’s the laughter that’s disturbing the most.

Father decides he doesn’t care. They need a Roy Mustang they can send through the Gate and out to the other side, after all- what does it matter if his mind’s got a few cracks in it or not?

He does order Envy to stop tormenting him, though. No sense in continuing to smash a hammer against an eggshell, he says.

Envy pouts for a week after this decree, and Lust continues to lurk outside his human’s cell, and listen.

The sobs sometimes stop. The screaming laughter does not.

* * *

“Do you realize how much of a sanctimonious pain you are?”

Roy Mustang blinks at him, sighs, and turns that cold, stubborn gaze away.

“Do you realize,” he parrots back, dull and dead, “how ridiculous it is that you’re holding me prisoner, yet still expect me to be nice to you?”

Lust glares at him. He pushes the next bite of food at him so roughly some of it spills over onto his chin, and he- petty though it is- relishes the quiet flash of shame over the cripple’s face as he has to raise the stump of his arm to clumsily wipe it off. He looks pathetic. Pathetic, and useless, and sad, and ashamed, and after all the trouble this lowly cripple has given him Lust will just take what small pleasures he can get.

They both know this is far more than just Roy Mustang upset that they are holding him prisoner. It has never been about the homunculi kidnapping him, and even Lust, as little as he’s ever truly understood, has known that from the beginning.

But Roy Mustang likes to pretend that it is, and Lust, mostly because it amuses him to play along, does.

He waits still a moment longer, hoping to tempt the man into looking back at him- but he’s refusing to even look away from the wall, something he’s treated to more and more these days. The pathetic cripple will not even _look_ at him anymore. “Semantics, human. You are always so hung up on this- this _taking prisoner_ thing. It’s not as if _I’m_ the reason you’re here, though~” he teases, and tickles his chest, tickles him the way human women love. Some of Envy’s wounds have begun to heal; some have not, and he lingers over these, brushing the overly sensitive skin as delicately and seductively as he can.The cripple stares harder at the wall, and he then starts to hum again. “I fail to see why you insist on turning into _such_ a _downer!”_

The cripple tilts his head. He still does not look at him, eyes averted like his life depends on it. “...You people,” he begins, softly, almost delicately, like a lover’s trial kiss, “cut off my hands. You took my legs. You took my freedom. You paralyzed my subordinate, plan to kill me, and already did kill... my best... friend.” He hesitates, then swallows, voice shuddering on the last word almost as if it was about to crack. “You will forgive me, homunculus, if I have no interest in brightening the mood for you.”

Lust watches him again, waiting, watching. He considers his options for a moment, wondering.

His choice is made, comparing the Roy Mustang he sometimes dreams of, and the sharp, warm eyes he can just barely remember, with the hateful, furious ones he knows now.

“Let us be honest here, _human.”_ He sits back, considering being unassuming for the sake of shock value, then lets the idea go to cross his legs on the bed, intruding right in to sit practically on top of him. The cripple shudders violently, pain almost contorting his face in anguish, and Lust grins. He still hums, too, because he can see very well how much he hates it. “You and I both know the real reason you’re being so... so stupidly _stubborn,_ with me.”

He leans forward, so close he can breathe the words in his face, and because he’s Lust, he does, in as low and seductive a purr as he can make it. “You hate me because of my human, _Roy._ You hate me because of the human whose face that I stole.”

And finally, he stiffens.

Lust loves to make this human squirm.

Unbidden, like he’s fighting it but can’t stop himself, Roy jerks to stare at him, and this close the pain and shock in his eyes is unmistakeable. Oh, that dead mask is broken now, all right. “You...” he murmurs, almost disbelievingly, and his black gaze roves over his face likehe’s seeing him now for the first time. “The human whose... face you stole...?”

Lust gives him another moment, another to stare and be lost, but he can’t resist continuing to play with him much longer; he is like a cat, a wild, feral, sadistic cat, and Roy Mustang is the most delectable mouse he has ever come across. Damn him to hell for refusing him like this; he will _make_ this human want him like he is meant to be wanted, and sinking his teeth into him like this is only the first step. “Yes, yes, Roy,” he murmurs, and leans back, just to stroke his face, again only because he can. “I remember you the way my human does. You loved him, didn’t you?” He strokes his thumb very slowly, inch by perfect inch, down his loathsome face, then lifts his hand to push back his ungroomed hair. “You loved him, and now, to see someone so much _better_ than he is wearing his face... you can not stand it.”

He leans even closer, and buries his fingers in his hair, clutching there to give him nowhere to retreat or look away to; his only choice is to look at him. “You hate me now- but you’ll want me, just like you did him. You’ll look at me, and realize how much better I am than him, and you’ll do what you lowly humans do and _love_ me.”

And then, just as quickly as Lust had cleaved the mask in two and forced Roy Mustang’s agony right out on his face, it is gone.

After all, he only understands humans as much as he has to, and as much as can be gleaned through seducing them and watching them lust after him. He’s not human himself. And, perhaps even more than that, he still only has his guesses as to just exactly _why_ this human here remains stubborn, and denies himself the vice that all humans love. He actually knows very little, and his grasp on how to play with their emotions is limited at best.

That is what Lust blames, when the reaction of more weakness, more disgust, and more pain, is not what he gets.

The anguish in Roy Mustang’s eyes fades like a switch being flipped off. It’s just gone, just like that... and left behind is not the shudders of disgust he earns so often, nor the slivers of pain that he’s made it his daily mission to see and to cause.

No. Left behind is nothing but the cold, dark hatred.

“You are nothing,” Roy Mustang hisses, his voice like ice and his eyes like fire, and he turns his face away from his hand with all the rebuke of a slap he was no longer capable of.

And Lust is left to sit there at his back, utterly neglected, and absolutely ignored.

His slumbering temper catches fire, and finally begins to ignite.

It’s not the continuing defiance, necessarily; he’s used to that, and has to come accept it, on some level, even though he’s still determined to one day break him down and remold him back up into his submissive pet that would never _dream_ of denying him. It’s not the cold rebuke, either, though he imagines a lesser man would feel insulted.

But those words.

To be told those words, from a disgusting human.

Humans do not speak to him this way. Humans, by definition, are beneath him- and _no one_ is more beneath him than this pathetic cripple who Lust must sit here and feed because his body’s too broken to do it himself- and _still,_ he spits in his face and scorns him. Humans, by definition, worship him- and Roy Mustang, still, after all this time, is the only one who will not.

But it is one thing for this human to be stubborn and defiant and refuse to give him the affection and desire and love he demands.

It is another, for _Roy Mustang,_ to look at _him,_ and call him nothing.

This pathetic cripple, so low even by human standards that there is surely _no one_ that will have him, looks at _him,_ and calls _him_ , nothing.

Humans _can not_ speak to him like this. And, out of all of them, the one who can shut his filthy mouth the most, is Roy Mustang.

Lust’s temper spikes, and for the very first time in his short life, he’s so angry he wants to kill someone.

He hurls the tray of half-eaten food at his cold, hateful face, jerks to his feet so roughly the cripple is upended and winds up half on the floor, his face and front splattered with soup. He hears another shuddering sort of hiss of anger behind him, but does not so much as turn to give the lowly human the time of the day as he roughly stalks from the room so he can impale the wall rather than their sacrifice, and gives the door the most resounding slam he can behind him.

Fuck Roy Mustang.

No, not even that- he doesn’t even care about _that_ anymore! It’s been too long, and that cripple is too _damn_ infuriating; he doesn’t care about sex with him anymore. Sex is only one of the ways these lowly humans love him, and Roy Mustang has given him such an unenjoyable fight it’s one that no longer matters to him. It’s not a struggle of sexual desire- he doesn’t want humans like that, anyway. The only reason he cares, has _ever_ cared, is because the human refuses him- it’s his personal forbidden fruit, made desirable only because it’s forbidden. But even now? _Now?!_

Roy Mustang is the one who is _nothing._

It’s because of his human. He knows that now, finally understands the entire reason behind this disgusting stubbornness. His old human’s face; it’s such a soap opera he suspects Envy arranged the whole thing. Roy kills him for killing Maes Hughes; Father brings him back with Maes Hughes’ face, and gives Roy to him all gift-wrapped with a bow on top- and the loathsome cripple is so _stubborn_ he won’t ever give in to worship him like all humans do, because he’s too hung up on the ugly, dead human whose face that he stole.

Irritating, hideous, _disgusting_ humans!

Lust slaps at the wall again, fingers growing to claw through the metal in a horrendous screech. It splits apart with a horrific, ear shattering cry, splintering before him in devastated ruin. But letting out this one explosion of anger, somehow, only stokes the fire; he wants to rip and claw and destroy now, wants to tear this whole godforsaken underground prison to the ground and rip Roy Mustang in two while he does it. This stubborn, _stubborn_ human- he’ll _destroy_ him! Let him break him apart, limb from limb, let him devastate this pathetic cripple until Roy Mustang can’t even begin to _think_ of denying him again. Roy Mustang thinks he’s worth something? He thinks he is _better_ than him?

No, no, _really-_ is _that_ what he thinks? This paralyzed, handless waste, this spiteful, angry, and bitter soul trapped in a body that doesn’t even work- and Roy Mustang calls himself _better_ than a homunculus?! Disgusting, insulting, irritating piece of trash. Piece of shit! He’ll claw his teeth out of his mouth and slice his tongue off it that’s what it takes; Roy Mustang will be broken down so far he’ll never be able to even try to say such words again. Nothing- _nothing!_ Lust has spent weeks, months, wearing him down, needling past his iron defenses, petting and stroking and grooming this human pet, working over the most prized conquest of his life; he has lowered himself down so low he helps a worthless cripple to sit and eat and dress, and, and-

He can’t stay down here a second longer. Loathsome Roy Mustang, that irritating woman still haunting his dreams and that child with her- he has to get out of here. He can not _bear_ to stand down in this underground prison and face those dreams and that cripple. No- no. He can _not._ He can’t, because if he stays down here one second later he is going to go back to Roy Mustang, and he is going to do something that he can’t take back.

He’ll go to the surface, he thinks, already turning violently away to stalk through the darkened halls. Another blow crashes through a wall and he can only relish the earsplitting smash and cry of metal it gives him. Yes. He’ll go back up there. Find a distraction in the form of humans who _don’t_ refuse him; he’s going to hunt down a whole _flock_ of women to seduce and take advantage of, who will love and adore him the way all these pathetic insects are meant to- Roy Mustang, who refuses him, can stay down here and _rot_.

He smashes through one of their many exits to the surface, slashing five deep, clawed gouges into the wall for good measure, and sets his sight on the nearest bar. Let Envy or Pride or _whichever_ of his siblings who wants to deal with the damage, deal with it. He doesn’t care; right now, all he wants is to be away from here, as far away as he can get, and burying himself in a mess of desire and longing and adoration and _love_ because _that_ is what humans are supposed to give him. Yes, he thinks again, turning violently down the street even as the claws retract, melting back into his hands, and he feels his face change as well, the angry snarl on his lips softening into his most brilliant, beautiful smile. It’s a mask, like the one Roy Mustang so loves to give him, but he always wears a mask, with these foolish humans; this one is no different- it’s his just best smile, the one that makes women swoon, and tonight, that is all he wants.

Tonight, that is what he will get.

Desperate, sloppy women to lick at his lap like the desperate, sloppy species that they are. He’ll make Roy do this someday, he thinks. He will make that pathetic cripple get on his knees before him and grovel, and _beg_ , and-

“Hey, there, Lust.”

Lust, his mind still in a blind whirl of rage and disgust, his hands already stretching in eager desire for the nearest warm body he can find, and his entire body still thrumming with uncontrollable, blinding fury, stops.

 

There, just before him, is a man.

He doesn’t recognize him, even though the man clearly recognizes him. Young, with long, dark hair, and foreign features, and all together an unassuming human just like the rest of them, except-

His eyes are that unnatural purple that marks him as one of their own.

“Fancy seeing you here,” the man says, grinning sharply, unnatural eyes flashing, and he raises his left hand.

Their tattoo.

“Greed,” he mumbles, and is stunned.

It’s more process of elimination, than anything else. He has never met Greed before, and knows of him only what their other siblings say. Traitor, liar, filth.

Greed grins again.

“I’m sorry for the late meeting,” he chuckles, and gives a mock bow. “I’ve been a little busy, you know, not cavorting with our creepy brothers and not following our father’s every whim. How’ve you been?”

Lust looks at Greed. He looks at the bar he’s standing just outside of. He weighs his options.

The blind rage, what, before, had been making his hands shake and his vision go red and his body fill to the brim with something he could not control, has all but been turned off by a switch. There’s little to be said, about the homunculi’s emotional control, but the sheer shock of this has had the benefit of dousing him in the ice water of sanity. He has a choice, suddenly- and he takes a moment, to think beyond the hot anger still lurking softly in the very back of his mind.

He can ignore him, and go after the women he’s come here for, and spend the night being adored. He can be a good little homunculus, and fight Greed here and now, because Greed’s a traitor to their cause and must be stopped. He can make a scene, and destroy a few city blocks, and start a whole _thing_ with Envy when the little shit complains to him about it, and waste his whole damn night.

He can also find the middle ground, and just listen to what he has to say.

Lust’s instincts tell him to ignore it all and just go after sex.

Greed gives him another smile, tattooed hand still raised in greeting, and says, “If you want to piss Envy off, then follow me.”

Lust considers this.

In the end, Lust does not kill him, and Greed takes him on a walk through the city, aiming to get somewhere where they don’t have to worry about silly humans overhearing and causing trouble. They wonder near a school, he thinks, he’s not sure, but it is deserted at this time of night, and his brother’s sarcastic grin finally fades as he scales the wall like a cat, leading them up to the roof; even more private and safe.

“So,” he says, tall and lean and stretching, still like a cat, in the moonlight. “A little birdie called. He told me you were depressed.”

No part of this sentence makes sense, and Lust makes his displeasure known by stabbing at him with one long knife of a finger. Greed casually deflects it with a black rush of alchemy over his skin, not batting an eye, and Lust glares again.

“Gluttony,” his brother explains, not looking at him. “Gluttony is the little birdie.”

“ _Gluttony?”_ Lust stares, momentarily knocked almost speechless, and sinks back onto his heels with a stunned look. “Gluttony? Gluttony can barely say his own name!” Then, as a belated afterthought, “And I am _not_ depressed!” He hates Gluttony. He can not _stand_ Gluttony. Even more than that, though, is the ridiculous insinuation that something is wrong with him. He doesn’t even understand what’s happening here. First, his dumbest brother apparently is talking about him behind his back, and now, the traitor that he has never even met is here to chat about it? _What?_

He considers going back to hunt down a nice bar and an even nicer group of women again.

Greed smirks a little, his eyes flashing in the dark, his smile sharp and brutal. “Gluttony is like a baby. A very fat, very affectionate baby. He can’t cut it on his own, does what Father wants because he doesn’t know any better, but picks up on a lot more than you bunch understand. He’s not so good with the words, obviously, but it doesn’t take that long to pick up on what he’s trying to say.”

“He’s never trying to say anything, except _hungry_ and _can I eat this.”_

This time, Greed’s the one to initiate the blow, punching his shoulder so hard he rocks into the stone roof and makes a cavern with his head. “Don’t make fun of the baby. It’s mean.”

Lust groans, still in the process of dusting himself off from the heavy blow his head had made with the roof. And now, this makes even less sense than before. He wonders if Greed has been taking lessons with Roy Mustang, because he is _just_ as good at infuriating him- perhaps even better. “What the hell do you even care?” he growls, glaring at the rooftop. “Are you telling me you came all the way back here, risked Father finding you and killing you all over again, just to make me play nice with that fat slob? _Really?”_ He finds himself starting to hum and is almost too startled to stop it; it’s such a habit, now, whenever he’s wanted to particularly get under Roy Mustang’s skin and annoy him- he’s almost forgotten that, in the moment, it’s not Roy Mustang he’s trying to annoy. “I know they said you were weird, Greed, but I think I’m seeing why Father doesn’t bother to hunt you down. You’re worthless.”

These comments, however, just win another smirk- though he’s not sure what he really expected; he’s not trying all that hard to annoy Greed away. “I don’t really care all that much, actually,” his brother says breezily, another sharp smile twitching into place. “I’m mostly just curious... and have a soft spot for Gluttony at times. You know, when he’s not trying to eat me. My human just made me come along to see how things were going for him.” He tosses another grin in his direction. “Come for me to find out my only younger sibling is struggling, and needs my help. And what’s an older brother to do but help out?”

There’s a long moment of silence.

Lust frowns.

Envy was right: Greed is a waste.

 

Greed kicks his legs out again, making a show of getting comfortable, and flexes his tattooed left hand, eying it and him with what looks to be amusement. “Let me guess, Lust,” he says warmly, and really does sound _far_ too comfortable for someone that he has a standing kill-on-sight order for. He even goes so far as to smile. “A sin’s existential crisis?”

Yes- Envy was most definitely right.

“I’m going home.” He lurches lithely to his feet, stretching claws and long limbs, and doesn’t give him back even a second glance. He doesn’t like violence, and he distastes an actual fight with someone who can match him even more- he’s not a brute like Envy. He doesn’t want to actually exert the effort to fight Greed, no matter what Father’s orders are. He is not, however, going to hang around here and listen to this nonsense. But, perhaps there’s still time to search out a couple humans to ravage before the sunrise...

“Lust,” Greed says, and there’s something in his voice that suggests he should listen.

And, because Lust is utterly at his wit’s end now, and has absolutely nowhere else to turn- he decides to throw caution to the wind and just go for it.

“It is nothing... there is just a- human. A human that... frustrates me.” He raises his head to glare out into the night; to say it out loud, he realizes how ridiculous it all is. He is Lust the Lascivious. He is above humans, and he is certainly above being frustrated by one like this- _he_ is supposed to frustrate _them._ That was why it had bothered him so much, when someone so far beneath him had looked at him and called him nothing, but- “It’s nothing of any importance. He’s not even worth anything by _human_ standards, he... he’s simply a massive waste of time and energy. Every second I’m forced to spend in his irksome company is a joke; I don’t even know why he matters to me at all- all he’s done is provide a constant source of annoyances for me.” He shakes his head, back still to Greed, bare feet flexing against the cold stone. “Tch... humans.”

Greed laughs again, sounding incredibly amused, and being laughed at only serves to make him even angrier. He raises a hand in silent threat and turns, already preparing to stab him through the heart (for all the good it will do him)- but his brother’s speaking up before he gets the chance. “Humans aren’t that bad, you know. I’ve got one in my head right now, and he’s not such an ass... you’ve just got to learn to live with them.”

“...Yes, well,” Lust remarks haughtily, “I think I’ll stay with our siblings, rather than lower myself down to cavort with such filth.”

“You’ve been talking to Pride.”

...This... is not relevant.

When he doesn’t respond, unable to give a proper reply to the baseless and- _correct-_ statement, Greed leans forward to look at him, eying him like a particularly appealing piece of meat. “Lust, my brother. You’re obsessed with humans; we all are, in some fashion. That’s just who we are. It’s far easier to accept it than fight it- but come on, Lust; all this fuss just because one human doesn’t like you? Please... surely you’re better than that.”

Lust decides he hates every single one of his siblings. He hates them even more when they are right.

Is he better than obsessing over Roy Mustang? Yes. Does that change the fact that his life has somehow still become driven by the desire to get that little shit to finally give in and-

“...He said that I was _nothing,”_ he mutters aloud, seething and sickened, and that, he supposes, is the heart of the matter.

If there is anyone who is nothing, it is that crippled human. He is worth nothing, can do nothing, _is_ nothing. But that cripple looks at him, looks at _Lust,_ and says that to _him?_

Disgraceful for a sin such as himself or not, he’s not going to turn his back on that man until he’s gotten absolutely everything that he wants from him. And now, what he wants is to crush him down into he’s broken into so many pieces he is unrecognizable, and is powerless and destroyed to the point he can do _nothing_ but finally submit to what humans are meant to be, and _need_ him just like all the rest.

Greed chuckles softly, and by the look in his eyes the opinion he holds of him is not much higher than the cripple’s. He still looks amused. He still looks spectacularly unbothered. “And that’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you can’t leave it alone... because you are a homunculus. You are Lust. You lust after _everything._ You want someone to love and worship your every move- and when someone doesn’t, it makes you want them all the more.”

“And you’re Greed,” he returns, not missing a beat. He doesn’t care that Greed is right; he’s already figured that much out on his own, thank you very much. “You waste our talents on money, cheap women, and booze.”

“Yes, I do. I do! And I love every day of it.” Greed’s gaze lands on him, heavy and all-knowing and utterly shameless. “Lust, my brother- I know you don’t remember much of all your lives yet. Well, I do. I have centuries of memories of working with Lust, so do me a favor and listen to me like I actually might know what I’m talking about.” He pauses, and while some of that irritating, smug as shit grin fades away, his heavy stare does not- Greed is serious. For the first time, perhaps in this entire meeting, Greed truly is sincere. “Your existence is wanting people,” he says quietly, watching him. “You want people to love you, Lust- you always have. And the way for us sins to be happy, is to embrace who we are, and go after what we want- and never mind what Father says about it.” He stops again, raising an eyebrow. “It’s... actually quite funny, really. The person you were before? I looked into it a little, when Gluttony contacted me. You... would’ve been happy like that.”

“What are you _talking_ about?” Greed is a waste. Greed is an unbelievable waste, a waste who is talking sheer nonsense, and he should be in bed right now, his arms around three sucking, writhing, stated women, instead of out here in the cold listening to this _drek._ “There’s no person I was before! I’ve always been Lus-”

“No, no, Lust... I mean the human whose body they made you out of.”

* * *

Greed gives him a picture before he leaves again, disappearing into the night to surely never return again. It’s a picture of a little girl.

He recognizes her as the little girl from his dreams.

He’s told that that this little girl will love him as much as he could ever want, because of the human he used to be. He tells him this is her school, and if he’s interested at all in taking a gander at life away from Father, he should stick around, and give it a try.

Lust knows, even before Greed leaves, that he’s not interested.

Roy Mustang is still far too important for him to drop off and leave, before he’s figured out what makes that human tick and cracked him like an egg.

He sticks around anyway.

The little girl eventually shows up, in among with all the other kids. She’s tiny, with big green eyes and short honey pigtails, and Lust knows, some part of him knows, that he should ignore her. Young children are incapable of the kind of attraction his very name demands, so, naturally, they are of little interest to him-

But there is a place inside of him that feels... something.

It’s not something he’s ever felt before. It’s deep, far deeper than any of the dull, primitive stirrings of sex that are such an often occurrence they no longer even excite him. He doesn’t think it’s sex at all, and for the first time in his life realizes there is more to affection, care, desire, than sexual attraction. It’s something warm, deep, and fierce; so fierce its strength holds him hostage and strangles him in its love.

It knocks the first memory loose. His first memory, not of Lust and all its lives, but of the human who’s body he has made his, and for the first time, he is more than just Lust.

He waits until the children are all playing outside, and the little girl is off by herself, doodling in the dirt under the shade of a tree, to drop right down beside her, and smile.

“Hi!” he greets warmly, and it is a miracle he could even say that much. His throat is tight and his voice is thick with emotions he’s never felt before, and he reaches out to put a hand on her head. _Mine. This human is MINE._ “I’m Lust.”

The little girl jumps. The little girl looks up at him.

The little girl screams.

Lust is long gone before any of the other humans rush over to her side, and he doesn’t stop running until he’s back underground, and far, far away from that child.

* * *

In just as panicked a mood as when he’d left his underground home, Lust returns to it.

He punches a claw through the nearest wall even if he it’s not the destruction of metal he desires but the splitting of a warm, bloody human body. He’s destroyed so much of their home today he knows he’ll be in for it with Envy, but he just doesn’t _care_ anymore. He doesn’t know what he wants as he stalks for the cripple’s cell, just that now the desire to _dominate_ him is so strong he can’t fight it any longer. Greed can go fuck himself, and Envy can go to hell, and _Roy Mustang,_ and the green-eyed woman in his dreams, and _that little girl_ , can all follow him there for all eternity for all that he cares. They’re nothing to him. They’re wastes of his time and he’d sooner kill them all himself before he wastes a single _second_ of his time on humans so _low_ and _unworthy._

How _dare_ Greed deliver that girl to him, make him feel _something_ , something that he has never in his life felt before-

And then, let that tiny child rip it all away, just like that.

He’d left his home in a trembling, blinding rage. He returns to it in a sick horror, and it feels like his entire world has been turned on its head, and his foundations broken.

He is going to kill Roy Mustang. He doesn’t care about the punishment this will bring, and he doesn’t care that it’s not _really_ that human’s fault this happened or that he feels like this. He’s going to turn his attentions right on Roy Mustang, the most convenient target he has for why his world has been rocked so violently and thrown on its edge, and he is going to put an end to it. He is sick and tired of putting up with this fucking cripple’s disgusting denial, and he is going to rip his head straight off his neck and be done with it. He is going to kill Roy Mustang, and never so much as venture to the dammed surface to look for the green-eyed woman or that vile child ever again, and _that_ is _that._

This plan, however, is stopped- and rather spectacularly, at that- when he runs into Envy.

And not _just_ Envy.

“Come on, human! Come on, stand up, fight me! That’s it, that’s it- stand up and fight me, _pathetic human!_ Awww, what’s this now? You can’t? You’re too _weak_ to so much as _stand?_ ” He kicks the prostrate body at his feet, so violently Lust swears he can hear a rib crack, and then he howls his laughter so high and loud he can hear it ring in the high-vaulted ceilings for seconds afterwards. “Pathetic! You are _PATHETIC!”_

The body at his feet, cast in shadow, is indiscernible at first, and he doesn’t care. This is not the first time he’s walked in on Envy playing with a human, and he has no interest in watching until the bloody end. Nor is he in any sort of mod to entertain Envy toying with _him,_ when his brother realizes his audience. No. No, he can _not_ deal with Envy right now- not wit his eyes still so blinded by bloodlust. He’s already taking a step back, planning a different route towards where he wants to go.

And then, the human at Envy’s feet moans, and tries to push himself onto back. Tries, being the operative word.

His arms don’t have hands, and his legs don’t move.

Lust’s shaken world spins straight off its axis, and he watches, paralyzed, as Envy kicks at Roy Mustang again.

The human is prone on the floor, sprawled in such an unnatural way it’s undeniable his legs don’t work the way they’re supposed to. He’s on his stomach at the moment, gasping, coughing on blood; he’s breathing so hard Lust can see the wheezes ruffle his matted, greasy hair. Pale and wiry, spidery, almost, the parts of his body that he can still move tight with pain and his old, stained clothes rumpled with the kicks and drying blood. Bruises paint what little of his skin that is visible, massive, spreading, violent bruises; the stumps of one of his wrists looks crushed.

He looks like a wooden doll tossed to crack against the wall and left to slide down in a broken heap.

Lust can’t move; can’t do a thing but stand there and watch for several long, impossible secondss as he watches Envy break his cripple. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, can’t even give a name for the rush of hot anguish through his blood like a poison-

All he can say is that it’s similar to how he’d felt looking down at that little girl that belongs to him, and he understands now that Roy Mustang- Roy Mustang, who he has just sworn to hate and to dominate and to kill- Roy Mustang is his, too.

He’s walking forward before he realizes it, and his footsteps resound on the concrete floor just as loud as each and every blow to the cripple’s face. They’re loud and inescapable, and before he knows it, Envy’s heard him and turned back around to fix him with one of the boldest grins he has ever seen.

His face is splattered with blood, and he doesn’t have to wonder whose.

“Lust!” his brother announces, and he wipes an arm across his face; all this does is smear the blood over his entire cheek. Lust’s blood _boils._ “It’s about time you came home... I was wondering if I was going to have to handle the punishment all by myself.”

“...Punishment?” he manages dully. He’s too thrown and shocked to know what he’s supposed to feel or say. Slowly, Lust drags his gaze off of Envy to stare at Roy; the cripple is so bruised and bloody he might not have even recognized him if not for his lack of hands. He’s barely breathing, and looks at neither of them, dark eyes shielded by his long, messy hair; Lust can hear his slight breaths crackle and turn gutturally deep with pain and blood. “What for?”

Envy kicks his heel back into the human again, like it’s an afterthought, both the blow and his victim. This time, the attack is so violent the moan he gets is as loud as a scream. “He tried to _escape_ , the shit. Can you believe that, Lust? He tried to _escape!”_

Lust stares.

Behind him, Roy writhes uselessly on the floor, torso arcing up with a frustrated cry and pale face turned desperately upwards, straining for help, hair parting to reveal a face torn with anguish, while the rest of him remains dead on the floor.

Lust almost doesn’t know what to say.

“E... escape?” he manages finally, and while most of him is still consumed with anguished and rage he’s so shocked he’s able to do nothing but stare, both at the cripple and at Envy. “How did he do _that?”_ Just like Greed’s entry had shocked him so much to clear his mind of rage, this new turn of events has shocked him so much he’s freed from the bloodlust. The cripple had to escape? How? How, how? The human can not stand. He can not walk. He can not open doors. He can not so much as drag himself.

 _How_ had his cripple even tried to get away?

Envy throws a hand up in exasperated indifference, bloody face twisting into another scowl. “I found him trying to crawl away. He’d scratched an array on the floor- there was a knife in his mouth, he actually tried to attack me with it- think about how pathetic that is, Lust! A human so broken he can’t even stand up, thinking he can best a homunculus when all he can do is crawl around on his stomach and wave a knife about with his teeth?! _Ha!”_

Lust blinks, staring again between Envy and the human on the floor. It takes him a moment to understand, and when he finally does, he’s not any less shocked than before.

He’d thrown the tray of food at him before leaving. Roy Mustang had called him nothing, he’d taken one look at him and thrown the tray in his face and left. And on that tray had been a fork and knife.

The human must have gripped it with his teeth and made a break for it the very second the opportunity had presented itself.

He’s almost too stunned to breathe.

It takes him several seconds to realize he should be worried, because it is his job to watch their prisoners and it is very clearly his fault that this happened- but he takes only one step back before Envy laughs at him, high-pitched and gleeful, and waves off his obvious concern like a bothersome fly. He’s grinning so brilliantly it’s almost blinding. “Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry, Lust- I won’t tell. It’s not as if he was going to get anywhere- isn’t that true, human?” He spins around suddenly, bounding down to land right by Roy’s head and tilt it back by his hair. The grin stays, brilliant and blazing and _smug,_ now pushed right into his human’s face.“Why don’t you tell Lust how far you got, hmm? How far did you get before I came and found you running from our hospitality?”

He’s still so bloody and bruised it’s a wonder Lust can read his face at all. It’s a wonder he’s not unconscious. But Roy stares up at Envy from the floor, lofted up into the air by Envy’s hand alone, limp and broken and at the absolute mercy of his captor- but, Lust slowly realizes. his face is not one of fear.

His eyes are narrowed and swollen, but overrun with hate. His face twists, not in physical pain, but sickened disgust. He jerks and coughs, shuddering in Envy’s grip, and remains absolutely silent. He is completely at Envy’s mercy, and very clearly knows the punishment awaiting if he does not answer- but his black eyes stay stubborn, and he says not a word.

In that moment, Lust at last understands how Roy Mustang could’ve looked at a homunculus, in every _single_ way his superior, and call him nothing.

Because, although Envy stands above him here, and is in complete and total control, such control there is not a thing Roy Mustang could ever do to escape to crawl away, and there is no one in the world who could look at this and say the human was winning, here-

With that look in his eyes, he realizes, to him, his captor truly is nothing.

 _“Tell him, human!”_ Envy screams, and the next blow is across the face; so violent and brutal, Lust thinks he hear the jaw crack out of alignment.

And Roy Mustang does nothing but hang there in his grip, stare up at Envy, and stay silent in defiance.

The quiet moves on, with the only break in the silence the steady, cold drop of his human’s blood on to the floor.

Envy’s smile fades. What replaces it, however, is not the anger he’d been expecting.

“Say it, human,” he murmurs, voice unspeakably cold, and leans down a little more, pulling Roy Mustang’s useless body with him. “Say it... unless you need reminding about what happens, if you disobey us.”

And just like that, the situation changes.

A change comes over Roy Mustang’s bruised face. Lust is not sure what exactly Envy means, or what he’s hinting at, but the human obviously needs no further explanation than these words. His face changes, cold defiance poisoned by the dark light of horror, just a splitsecond of anger and fear but it’s there-

And this time, Envy has won, and Roy Mustang has just lost.

“S-seventeen... feet.”

“What was that?” Envy laughs, loud and boisterous again, jerking his head back even more. Lust can tell he’s been taunting the human with this number for some time now, and that this is just the first time he’s been made it speak it. “Say it again, with _pride;_ I don’t think Lust heard you.”

The human stiffens again. His bruised face contorts and for a moment, he’s just so pained, so _wounded,_ even Lust can see it bleed through his eyes, clear as day. But then, like always, Roy Mustang shoves it away, and once again, Roy Mustang does what he does best: puts up a fight.

He struggles his way upright; he can’t even sit up on his own, not anymore, but with Envy’s hand on his hair he’s able to manage it all the way. It’s clearly an astronomical struggle for him, the pale, gaunt body writhing and contorting as he bucks in the air, fighting his way up as much as he can with dead legs and no hands- but a fight that is clearly worth it. He groans and gasps, trembling, bleeding, but he fights his way all the up, and he looks at Envy- looks him right in the eye.

And, though it clearly takes every ounce of whatever pride he has left, he says those damming words again, loud, strong, and proud. “Seventeen feet.”

There’s a dark moment of silence.

“Seventeen feet!” Envy cackles; the proclamation cracks with sheer _delight_. He yanks his hand away violently, the cripple left floundering with his arm stumps to catch himself and stay upright, clinging to whatever dying remains of his pride there are. He fails completely, and hits the floor on his stomach, then his hand stumps, and then his bruised, bloody face. He smacks the stones again like a discarded wooden doll, flopping down unnaturally with a loud grunt, then gasp of pain, and is absolutely helpless to do _anything_ but just lie there, prostrate at Envy’s feet, spread out like-

Like a victim for sacrifice.

Envy cackles again, this time, so loud the high-pitched joy and sadism echo off the high ceilings in cold, callous delight.

“Seventeen _feet!”_ he screams again; Lust thinks his brother is having the time of his life. “He had every advantage, and yet could only crawl seventeen feet by the time I found him! On his stomach, like the worm humans are! Seventeen feet, human- where did you even think you were going to go, hmm? You weren’t going anywhere like that! You couldn’t have even made it to the _street_ like that!”

The human lies silently on the floor, but it’s still not broken anguish contorting his face, but anger- indeed, he’s nearly vibrating with rage under Envy’s gaze, still stubborn, still defiant, even to the very last. Lust can not understand it. He can barely believe it. He certainly has no idea what to feel- but Envy does not give him the time to find out.

No. Envy, already losing patience with just taunting the cripple, suddenly stalks forward to lift him up by the collar once again. “Here!” he cries, holding him all the way up in the air, so high his dead feet only brush the floor, “here, I’ll even let you have a free hit! First hit’s yours, human! If you still want to escape, you’re free to try! Come on, Roy- give it a shot!”

Roy does not.

Lust is left to watch, still just barely even a silent spectator in this demented thing Envy causes play, but, still, Roy Mustang does not play with him. No: Lust watches, and Roy Mustang does nothing but hang limply in Envy’s grip. His legs sway uselessly in the shadows, dead as doorknobs, and the stumps of his arms remain still by his sides. He does not fight back, though, after all these months of slowly learning what makes the cripple tick, Lust knows he wants nothing more to. He knows it hurts him and breaks his stubborn pride like nothing else, to simply look at his violent, insane captor, to hear these taunts, and do exactly nothing to defend himself.

But, then, what’s he supposed to do- beat one of his stumps on the side of Envy’s head? Try and move himself around so one of his unmoving legs might sway far enough to nudge him? There is nothing, really, that he can do- nothing that wouldn’t scream uselessness and pitiful and _broken_.

And Envy knows this.

It’s what Envy’s after- the one thing that’s a more laughable show than the cripple crawling about on what’s left of his wrists with a knife gripped between his teeth.

Lust isn’t sure, but in this moment, he thinks that he wants to kill Envy- and this time, it’s not a passing irritation or wish to stab him through the head but watch him get right back up after it.

He wants to reach into his chest, grab his philosopher’s stone, and grind it until it doesn’t exist anymore.

That is _his_ human.

Roy doesn’t fight back. Roy does nothing at all but silently seethe, right at Envy, and hang there as limp as a corpse in his grip.

And at last, with nothing more than a snarl, Envy drops him. He crumples to the floor again with a loud, painful _thump,_ and though he tries to muffle the cry he can hear it escape, all the same, hear it as he crumples gracelessly and dead legs fold underneath him. The side of his face hits the floor and Envy gives him another kick, for good measure- and Lust has had enough.

“Leave him alone, Envy.”

Envy ignores him, and gives his human another kick.

“I said to leave him _alone._ ” He slips around to stand right in his way, looking first at his brother, then down at the shameful disgrace of a man on the floor. He’s trying to crawl again, shuffle forwards on the stumps of his hands, and Lust stomps a foot down on his wrist to pin him in place and relishes the muffled cry when he gets it. He turns back to Envy, feeling his fingers tingle and shift with desire to grow into claws and in that moment wants nothing more than to stab him straight through and see him die. “He’s mine, Envy.”

Bewilderingly, Envy’s eyes brighten. He glances back down at the helpless human, and his smile stretches into an almost predatory grin. “Possessive, are we?” he murmurs, and he slips around Lust’s side to look down at Roy as well. “Sounds like you’ve got my brother’s interest, little human.”

And once again, Roy clings to whatever pathetic pieces of his pride remains, and rather than keep silent and still like humans ought to, continues to fight them.

His dark eyes narrow in disgusted hate, his bruised face twists in sickened fury, he looks at them both with a stare of such hate it almost chills his already dead heart, and he says, voice flat and dark, “I belong to neither of you.”

Whatever patience he’s had left ends.

Just like that, he stabs a single claw through the stump of his wrist, piercing him through and through like meat on a skewer, turns his back, and stalks away from the bloody hall, dragging his crippled human, now shouting, near screaming in pain, behind him.

* * *

Lust hadn’t intended to punish Roy Mustang, but somehow, this is how it ends up.

He drops him on the floor of his cell and extracts his claw from his arm inch by devastating inch, splintering the bones in two. Roy screams and screams, and he kicks him in the mouth just to get him to shut up. “What were you _thinking?!”_ he snarls, “You try and run from me? From _me?!_ ” He backhands him straight across the face, then again, and again, slashing until what little unblemished skin there was is now red with the beating. _“_ You belong to me! You don’t get to run _anywhere_ from me!”

Roy sits there and doesn’t fight. He doesn’t try and push him away or back away to freedom. He just sits there on the floor and stares up at him, and he’s panting, and his bruises are wet with sweat and his mouth is dripping with blood, but his swollen eyes are dark with a fight that’s never going to go out. Just like with Envy- he resists by not resisting. He fights by not fighting.

He’s always done this, Lust realizes, in his hot anger- _this_ , right here, is how the human has always fought and denied him- he refuses to play.

And right now, Lust hates him for that.

“You belong to _me,”_ he hisses again, and whacks the human so hard across the face he’s sent back down to the floor again.

And still, Roy Mustang does not fight him.

Just, after several still, hateful seconds, seconds dripping with blood, turns his wounded face, just enough to look him in his eye.

“I don’t,” he says carefully, coldly, perfectly enunciating every single syllable of the denial, “belong to you.”

On there on the floor like that, sprawled, in pain, and utterly helpless, blood streaming and eyes bright, he looks stronger than Lust has ever seen him.

Roy raises one arm to wipe furiously at the blood pooling in the corner of his mouth, the scarlet mess coming off on his sleeve. He glares at him so hard, with such sheer _defiance,_ he sees more life in him than the dozens of able-bodied, malleable women he seduces every week.

As much as Roy had once been his- and he remembers just enough of his old human’s life to know that Roy _did_ once belong to him, whether in a sexual way or not- he refuses to allow it anymore.

Just as that little girl at the school refused him, and just as, he is sure, her mother would refuse him too.

Because he is Lust the Lascivious, and not Maes Hughes.

And because he is not Maes Hughes, to them, he is nothing.

Slowly, his legs fold, and he drops down onto the edge of Roy’s messy bed. He clutches a fist at the frame and quietly feels his claws extend and retract, one by one carving his territory and his rage into the cold metal.

He hates Roy Mustang, but he hates Maes Hughes even more.

Across from him, Roy raises his head a little, some of that burning defiance in his eyes cooling into a hesitant uncertainty. There’s still nothing in him but icy, toxic hate, but it softens a little. He pauses, then shifts to awkwardly maneuver himself with his stumps to sit a little more against the wall- and move a little further away from him.

Blood still drips from his mouth, a tooth or two knocked out, and streams down his face, his nose broken and at a severe angle at that. As well as he’s come to know that face, in these past months, he doesn’t know it very well now, discolored and swelling, dark hair matted and stuck to his forehead with blood. One eye is starting to swell shut.

But the strength in his gaze is not gone. It has never, no matter how hard Lust has tried, broken.

Lust doesn’t know why he throws the picture out on the floor. He doesn’t know why it matters to him; perhaps he’s just curious how the human will react- perhaps he just wants to provoke a reaction at all. Wants _something_ out of Roy Mustang except this stubborn defiance and unyielding hatred.

Whatever the reason, he takes the picture of that little girl he can not forget out of his pocket and throws it out on the floor, right where Roy Mustang can not even pretend to not notice it.

 

Roy blinks. He looks down at the picture. Lust waits.

It takes him several moments to get a reaction beyond a low, shocked gasp, his face twisting into a frozen rictus of disbelief. He just sits there, blood dripping out his open mouth, and gapes, and Lust waits silently for the reaction that is all he wants.

Slowly, the human’s bruised eyes widen. He stares down to the picture, then back up at Lust, then down to the picture again. Another gasp is wrenched from his throat.

His head jerks back up to stare at Lust, and in all these months this man has been kept prisoner here, Lust has never seen him look so devastated.

“You,” he snarls. There was fight in his voice before, when he fought for himself, but that was nothing compared to the torture in his eyes now as he looks Lust right on. He would fight for himself, but in that second he understands that he would _die_ for her. “ _You.”_ He pushes himself up, an awkward and pathetic show with legs that don’t work and arms without hands. His teeth are suddenly bared like he’s a wild animal caged in by his own crippled body, blood still dripping down his chin and he’s shaking, gasping, enraged. “Y-you- _Lust,_ you- what did you do to her? I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. If you so much as touched her- if you even fucking _looked_ at her, I’ll-“

“You’ll what?” Lust leans back, making a great show of opening himself up for a blow, just like Envy had before. He spreads his legs wide, but it’s too much effort to make himself smirk when Roy stares up at him now, stricken. “You can’t do anything. Face it, human; you belong to me whether you like it or not.”

The human still stares at him, and he’s trembling now, badly. He drops his gaze down to the picture on the floor and reaches out; a low, tortured moan escapes him when he can’t so much as pick it up and hold it. He whispers something, a name, perhaps; it’s too low for Lust to make it out- and then, then-

Then, at very long last, he breaks.

He does not break as Lust had expected him to.

 _“YOU!”_ Roy Mustang screeches, and, with all the strength and agility his broken form can muster, bodily throws himself upon him.

Wrists beat over his shoulders and neck, slamming into his face again and again. The pale body before him writhes and fights, dark head slamming against his in a blow that might’ve actually hurt, if he could feel pain. He even tears at him with his teeth, biting and gnashing over and over, tearing the flesh even as his red alchemy heals it. For several stunned seconds, Lust can’t even decide if this strange violence are an attempt to ravage him, or kill him.

Then, amidst the hoarse, wordless howls of anguish and rage, Roy Mustang takes pity on him, and lets him know without making him wonder.

 _“I’LL KILL YOU!”_ he screams, so loud and earsplitting it shocks him to his core. _“I’LL KILL YOU! You killed her- you killed her-_ ** _I’LL KILL YOU, LUST!”_**

And Lust is too stunned to do anything but let him.

It’s equal parts pathetic and endearing. Roy Mustang can not kill _anyone_. He literally can not even kill a fly, in his broken, useless body.Even with Lust lying down, giving him every blow he wants, there’s nothing he can do. His wrist stumps pound at him, his teeth claw at him, his head is pushed back into the floor, but it’s such a formless and weak assault Lust barely finds that he even needs to heal himself. Oh, yes, it is pathetic, to see such a lowly cripple try and take down a homunculus- but it’s almost endearing, too. To see such a lowly cripple try so very hard, and still fail.

It’s also intolerable.

After all this time that he’s spent, trying to break down the human’s walls and masks, to force out the pain he knows lives within him, to break him all _down-_ and it turns out, all he’d needed to do was show him this picture to do it.

Because, there is no question about it: Roy Mustang is irrecoverably broken now.

He lets the human beat him, or, try to, at any rate. He lets him scream. _“YOU KILLED HER!”_ he howls over and over, and Lust just lets him do it, let the human beat and berate him just as Envy had done to him. It barely hurts, and for this chance to finally, _finally_ catch the human in a breakdown...

He can’t say he’s beautiful like this, because he can’t ever deign to give a human such praise. He can say, so deadly and bruised, bloody and fierce, weak and broken and pathetic but fighting and fighting back and _strong,_ this is the first time he’s ever looked at a human, and truly wanted to see more.

Roy Mustang, just like that little girl, belongs to him. This bloody, shouting monster before him belongs to him, and, broken or not, Lust shall see to it that it stays that way.

This is what he has always wanted, he thinks- to see Roy Mustang at last broken. He wonders why it is so hard to enjoy it.

 _“YOU KILLED HER,”_ Roy Mustang screams against his chest, _“_ ** _YOU KILLED HER!”,_** and there is nothing for Lust to do but let him.

It takes a only a short while for the cripple to finally tire himself out; whether it’s the beating from Envy, or the weakness of his body as he barely moves and barely eats, or the weight of the desperate, devastated anguish from the revelation that he thinks he’s had, but he weakens and tires out so quickly, it’s almost shameful. Lust lies there beneath him and watches, almost clinically, as Roy Mustang finally exhausts himself in this breakdown, and at last, falls still.

He sits there on his chest, breathing hard, dripping blood down onto him. His head is bowed, his bruised face written with exhaustion and shock; Lust can feel his pulse thud, hard and uneven, in the dead legs around him, and for a long second, there is nothing, except the sound of his low, strained gasps and his shaking, worthless body.

Then...

Then, he breaks again.

Roy Mustang, the most stubborn and strong human that he has ever met, defiant enough to stand strong before him no matter what Lust has done to try and break him, Roy Mustang-

He breaks again. And this time, when he breaks, he starts to cry.

It’s silent; his breaths hold steady, there’s no crack or break in his voice, he doesn’t even tremble anymore. Lust thinks he might not even realize he’s doing it- in fact, it took him a moment to realize it, himself. But he is; sitting there on top of him, chest heaving, down on his nonexistent hands and worthless knees, helpless and hopeless- and, silently, he cries.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. But it is not to him. His bruises face is overtaken with sorrow, and slowly, miserably, he reaches the stump of his hand back away from him to touch the picture. He brushes it like it’s the most precious thing in the world, then pulls back to wrap his arms around himself, frozen with broken, devastated despair.

“Maes,” he moans. And his voice, just like his visage, breaks.

“I’m sorry. Oh, Maes... I’m so _sorry._ Oh, no... they killed... oh, god. Maes, I failed you again. I failed... oh, Maes... I’m- I’m _sorry...”_

And Roy Mustang sobs.

Lust pauses.

Who is this girl?

Who is this child, who makes him feel something that he hasn’t known in centuries? Who is this child, who breaks Roy Mustang in two with nothing more than a discarded picture when he’s been trying for months with no success?

Who is this girl, and why does she make him feel things that he can’t stand to suffer?

Who is this girl, and why does he want her?

Who is this girl, and why does he remember her?

Maes.

It all comes back to Maes... and that is the name, his cripple says to him now.

Maes.

It is always Maes, with him.

_Why do you look at me and see him, my human?_

_Why do you look at me, and see him?_

And in the broken devastation on his human’s face now, he finally, finally understands.

Roy loves Maes, and he hates him.

And he and Maes are one and the same.

He looks up at Roy Mustang, as he has so many times in these months of trying to wear him down and mold him and break him. He looks at man on the floor, bruised, shaken, and crying; looks at the horror written on his face and burned in his eyes, looks at the slumped devastation before him.

He’s broken him now. All this effort, all this struggle, all this _fighting,_ and it was as easy as just tossing a picture down on the floor.

All this time, that is all that he’s wanted.

And yet...

Now. Now, with a broken Roy Mustang in the palm of his hand-

_I want more._

Slowly, inspiration strikes... and just like that, Lust knows what he truly must do.

He leans forward to sit up again and grins. The motion alone is enough to unbalance the human’s tenuous balance, but Lust is already lifting his broken body up and setting him bodily aside; Roy Mustang does not even resist. He just lands weakly on the nearest wall, slumped and shaking, gasping and sobbing, swollen eyes squeezed shut, and the sight makes something inside him thrill. He licks his lips, long and slow, and even though the gesture might be wasted on the human he does it again, running his tongue over the slight, inhuman points of his teeth. “Tell me who she is,” he commands, and continues to grin.

Roy’s head jerks up to stare at him again, and he looks so horrified and devastated he can barely speak. He chokes the words out anyway, anguished hatred weighing down every word. “I won’t tell you a single fucking thing about her.”

“Oh, but you _will.”_ He leans forward again, fixing him with most seductive stare. He will have to fix his cripple for this plan, that’s the drawback... He’s broken now, and Lust will have to put him back together, he’s spent all these months trying to find the key to shattering him and now he has it-

And, slowly, Lust shakes his head in the face of everything he has ever wanted, and lets it go.

Because he now understands that he wants more.

“You see, my human. This girl? She is not dead. I haven’t even touched her. ...Yet.”

It’s an empty threat, through the human might not know it. This child means nothing to him; at least, she _shouldn’t_ \- but he’s not about to kill her for this. There’s no point in that.

But Roy Mustang, trapped for the rest of his short, dying life in this one room, does not know that.

The human gapes at him again.

There’s a long moment of shock and disbelief, trails of tears still glistening on his discolored, swelling face but dark eyes suddenly, abruptly, dry. Roy Mustang sits there, and he gapes at him, and- and from the broken pieces of his cripple, very slowly reforms the man.

“She’s... okay?” he gasps at last. His voice is broken and weak, cracking in the words like he’s still in the process of falling apart and can’t remember how to put himself back together again. “You didn’t-“

“Not _yet,”_ he stresses, and grins once more. He doesn’t want to let the human’s reaction to this play out; he doesn’t have that kind of time. “But I know who she is- and her mother, human. And unless you tell me who they were to Maes Hughes?”

He raises one long claw, and draws it across his own throat. The red alchemy of his kind heals the wound before the blood has even reached his collar- but these human women’s necks will not heal.

And his cripple knows that.

Roy pauses. It’s hard to read his bruised face, but there’s uncertainty along with the pain there, and he looks back down at the small picture before him, touching it again with his stump. He hesitates.

“...You’ll leave them alone?” he asks at last, his voice unsteady. “If I tell you who they are, you won’t hurt them?”

And because it doesn’t matter, because his word to a human means nothing, because this human will never know what he does or doesn’t do, and because all that matters to him anymore is learning who his body used to be and why he can’t earn the desire of any who knew him, because he is _Lust,_ and _no_ human will deny him, he swears it.

“If you tell me who Maes Hughes was, then I’ll leave any human alone that you want.”

The cripple human stares up at him, eyes, still wide and stricken, and Lust waits in perfect silence. He sits and waits while the man decides, waits as the destroyed man before him decides between saving the living and honoring the dead- because finally, in all these months of his short existence, he knows what he needs.

He needs to know who he is.

Slowly, wide, black eyes leave his, and the man touches his beloved picture with his wrist stump. “You didn’t hurt her?” he asks, hollow and shaking, and Lust knows that the wrong answer to that question is all he would need to break him.

All this time, what he’s wanted is to break him.

Slowly, Lust shakes his head.

Roy’s eyes shut, and he sighs such acute relief he can taste it.

“...That,” he murmurs finally, and these words are his salvation, “is Elicia Hughes. And you, Maes... used to be her father.”


	2. Flowers for Your Wife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooooo a chapter of an acceptable length wow what an accomplishment ;_; i'm so sorry

He is Maes Hughes.

This is his key, to everything.

To himself. To what he wants, to what he needs, to what he is. To Elicia Hughes, and why he wants that little girl to be his in every definition imaginable. To why he dreams of a woman with green eyes and honey hair, who calls him sweetheart and he knows now loves him more than any of those faceless bodies he’s claimed combined.

To Roy Mustang, and why he’s never been able to win his desire.

He is Maes Hughes.

And this is at once everything he has ever wanted to know, and nothing he has ever wanted to be true.

* * *

Day by day, and visit by visit, Lust learns.

Roy Mustang is not his, not yet- but he speaks with him now, willing, answering anything he could ever ask for and then some.

He’s not sure how much of it is just to keep little Elicia Hughes safe, and how much of it is because Lust is actually winning him over, but such specifics don’t matter, just yet- just that he’s getting his way.

Lust still always must see him, twice a day, there to sit him upright and spoonfeed, so he has the excuse if Envy or Father ever asks- but now, he’s not only there because he’s ordered to. Now, he’s there to learn who he is, and Roy is only too happy... or, at least, willing... to oblige.

They find a pattern, something of a ritual. He slips in for lunch and dinner, tray of food in his hand and blithe smirk on his face, a smirk that dissolves the moment the door is shut. He walks over to the bed, rolling his hips because he is Lust, and can not help himself. He hums, just to get a rise out of him. He sits behind his human to get him upright, often finds himself wrapping an arm around him, again, because he is Lust, and can not help himself. And there, like this, gently holding him, possessive and protective like, he asks questions, and in between the bites of food, he gets his answers.

It’s difficult, in the beginning. Well- he’s lying to himself; it’s not just difficult in the beginning, it’s difficult for a very long time indeed. Roy is still reluctant to tell him what he wants to know, and guards the dead Maes Hughes’ secrets as closely as he can- but it takes only a few quiet reminders of the lives that hang in the balance to loosen his tongue. The stories he gets are still carefully chosen, he knows; ones that mean little to Roy, and probably meant little to the dead Maes Hughes...

But they mean everything to him.

“He was obnoxious,” Roy tells him, one of the first stories he gets. Despite how unwilling he is, that Lust is quite literally holding innocents at gunpoint to drag out these words for him, he can see just how hard Roy Mustang is trying not to smile. Though his voice is left voice dull and monotone, and his mouth does still stay flat, his eyes color with nostalgia and warmth. “Whenever I was trying to work and didn’t have time, he’d call me and hog my office line to spend half an hour, telling me some story about his kid that I already knew. He told me about Elicia’s first steps seventeen times before I started hanging up on him.”

Lust grins sharply, and his dead heart twinges in his chest. He wonders what it means, that Roy Mustang had counted, and still remembers, the number of calls. “Well, that was rude of you,” he provokes, and pushes another bite of food at him to shut him up. He thinks about that tiny human being that he created, the idea of her learning how to walk with him and that honey-haired angel holding her little hands. They are _his._ They belong to him, they love him, and they- they-

_They are mine._

“He couldn’t take no for an answer, either,” comes out next, muffled, around a mouthful, and ripe with irritation. “When I turned twenty one, I had an alchemy exam the next morning and had to study, so I couldn’t go out. I told him as such, but did he listen? No. He got some of the other cadets to tie me up, throw me in the trunk of their car, and hauled me out to the red light district. They got me so drunk I couldn’t even find the exam room the next morning. I had to repeat the entire class.”

Once again, Lust smirks. “I always knew I was the better one here,” and hugs him a little closer, _he is mine,_ “and that you were just a sad sack,” and his answering chuckle is nothing close to funny and everything close to sorrow.

“...Yes,” Roy whispers, voice thick, “you did.”

They can talk for hours like this. Roy seems to have a million ways to say how Maes Hughes was an irritating, loud, impolite ass with terrible stories, terrible timing, and terrible ideas, but he says them all with a trembling whisper, and sometimes looks at him during these with such a soft, bitter smile he feels loved for the very first time.

He can sit there like that, humming, holding the cripple to his chest, stroking his hair, and listening, for forever. It’s an impossible juxtaposition; him sitting here holding his prisoner like this, soft, almost as a lover, Roy stiff and frozen before him, eyes averted, voice cold- but his human is simply stubborn, Lust knows. He’s always been stubborn. He wouldn’t be Roy Mustang if he didn’t try and deny him what he, as Lust, is owed, but this is okay. Lust will continue to hold him like this because he can, because it’s what he has learned to do, and Roy will continue to be stubborn and resist him because he has to, but Lust knows he is wearing him down. He knows, one day, he will win.

The only problem is, Lust is beginning to not be so sure what winning would even look like, anymore.

* * *

When he’s not with Roy, against his word or not- he is with Gracia and Elicia.

They don’t know he’s there. He’s learned his lesson; he can not show himself to them. But ... there is nothing stopping him from just watching.

And watch, he does.

Some days, he follows Gracia around. He watches from the tree outside her apartment, trails her on errands. It strikes him as ironic; at least babysitting Roy Mustang is worth a homunculus’ time. The Flame Alchemist is their sacrifice and they need him, as shameful as watching and spoonfeeding a cripple is. But this? Following a widowed housewife around the city, watching her grocery shop, sit in a café, walk through the park- it is _embarrassing._ Surely, a homunculus has never fallen so low.

He adores her to pieces, and sometimes, really just wants nothing more than to drop down out of his hiding place and swallow her up in the biggest hug he can give.

He doesn’t, of course.

One day, he follows her, and she doesn’t go to run errands, or take Elicia to school, or visit with friends. One day, he follows her, and trails silently behind her like a ghost- and she takes him to a cemetery.

This time, his cold, dead heart sinks a little deeper in his chest, and he lurks far farther away from her than is truly necessarily.

It doesn’t matter. Even hidden in the shadows and branches of a tree, well over forty feet away, with the most of the cemetery deserted, his sensitive ears can still hear the fact that no words are spoken. None at all. Gracia Hughes just stands in front of the grave, her dress ruffling in the wind and hugging herself against its chill, and looks down and the cold, white marble, and says nothing at all.

She doesn’t stay very long.

Lust is still hidden in his tree when Gracia kneels down to the grass, perhaps only ten minutes after she came. She gently rests a bouquet- white lilies, and he wonders for a moment, if there’s symbolism or significance in the choice, for a human- against the grave. She leans forward, softly kissing the surely cold, unforgiving marble, and then she rises to her feet, and she walks away.

Her head is down, short hair obscuring the shadows of a haunted, grieving face, but even from here, he can see that she is not crying.

She looks too heartbroken for it.

Lust waits, until Gracia Hughes is well and gone, to finally drop down from his hiding place, and venture forth to bear witness to the truth he has already known for a long time.

Maes Hughes, the gravestone says. _Brigadier-General Maes Hughes. Beloved husband, father, and friend._ He snorts, shoving his hands in his pockets, and scuffs a toe at the stone. Even from the scant little Roy Mustang has told him about the human who’s face he now wears, he suspects Maes Hughes would’ve hated it.He wouldn’t have appreciated the military rank engraved there for what humans call all eternity. He wouldn’t have liked the cold, boring gravestone, or the cold, boring flowers- perhaps not even the epitaph, for how typical and cliche it is.

Lust, too, gets to his knees. He reaches for the flowers, and pries their soft, silky petals apart to slip free the shiny square he’d spied from twenty feet away from within.

It’s a picture.

Gracia Hughes, and on her shoulders, their daughter. They’re both smiling.

Lust bears his teeth in a grin, and smoothly exchanges the picture for the one still hiding in his pocket- the one of just Elicia. He pushes it coldly back into the flowers, already forgetting it and treasuring his new keepsake instead. If he wants to pretend, he can almost imagine Gracia had left it here just for him.

“You don’t mind- do you, Hughes?” he asks aloud, speaking to the grave, and then, laughs. “After all, let’s be honest, here. You weren’t ever going to look at it anyway.”

Nothing but the cold wind answers him, and Lust continues to grin, covering the emptiness of his heart.

* * *

The next day, just because he can, he buys her flowers.

He leaves the bouquet waiting for her on her doorstep, wildly pink and yellow and purple flowers he’d picked just as an affront to her coldly clinical white ones; these, too, come with a note stuck between the petals. This is not a picture, but just a tiny scrawl wishing her a good day, and signed with nothing more than a heart so cheesy he wants to _vomit._

Gracia Hughes spends a long time sitting on her couch holding the flowers. She looks to a picture of her husband, the same way Roy had looked to that picture of Elicia. Her smiling, happy, loving, beloved, dead husband.

She throws the flowers away.

After this, he stops following Gracia Hughes all together, and instead turns his attention towards her daughter. His daughter? Their daughter?

It doesn’t really matter what she is. Just that he doesn’t want to see Gracia anymore.

* * *

He follows her around at her school, watching her even closer than he had ever watched her mother. Some might think it difficult for a man like him to hide amongst a crowd of five year olds, but it’s surprising how easy it is to be unseen when no one’s looking for him. It’s so easy to just hide and watch her, but-

Oh, it is so much harder to restrain himself from appearing to Elicia than for Gracia.

For Gracia, watching her felt like a dull ache in the center of his chest. He knows her, he _knows_ her from the way she walks to the sound of her laughs, and it feels like she just fits into a hollow space by his side he hadn’t known had even existed until now. But Elicia?

She’s his. She is _his,_ in a way that Gracia and Roy simply aren’t. He watches her get back a math test with a bright and shiny sticker and something in him- not the homunculus, certainly not that- but some small part of him dances and sings and thrills with pride and he wants to pick her up in a hug and never let her go. He made her, he created her, she belongs to him, and he wants her more than anything he has ever wanted anyone in his short existence.

In that moment, he knows, he _knows,_ that if his brothers need something from Gracia Hughes, or something more from Roy Mustang, he will help them get it- but if they want something from Elicia Hughes, they will have to go through him to take it.

There is another boy at Elicia’s school, a boy that reminds him somewhat of Pride; he likes to pick on her. Pulls her pigtails, trips her at recess, makes fun of her dresses. Lust watches him quietly, and he seethes. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is when he sticks gun in her hair, and he has to watch a sobbing human child have her entire pigtail be cut off by her teacher.

Lust does what a homunculus is meant to, and follows his instincts.

He breaks the boy’s neck, and makes a mental note to mention to Gluttony later that he has a snack for him.

He decides not to mention it to Roy. It’s just- things _have_ been going so well with his human lately, and he feels this will only sour it. And there is no need for that.

No one picks on Elicia anymore.

* * *

Roy dreams less about Ishval, and more about Maes.

He wakes up screaming less, and wakes up crying more.

* * *

Lust’s grasp of human emotion is... limited. He tries, but the way these fragile beings react and express and _feel_ so very much is simply beyond him, even on his best of days. As such, it takes him a very long time to understand a smile does not mean his human is happy.

It’s taken him a while- but Roy smiles when he comes in the room now. He smiles, corners of his mouth starting to uplift like it is just a _reflex_ just at the mere sight of him. And at first he is thrilled, at first he knows that it has taken _months_ of work and _weeks_ of working out the stories of Maes Hughes out of him but he has now finally, finally won, he thinks _I’ve done it, he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s MINE-_

But he learns to look deeper, and see past the surface. And he learns to read that a smile can be sad.

Roy’s always are.

He smiles when Lust comes in the room, but it’s a reflexive little resigned one. He smiles when he talks about Maes, though very rarely when about anything else- but these-

There is something unspeakably sad about them, and the more he learns to see it, the less he is able to look at him as he speaks.

Roy Mustang is supposed to love him. He is supposed to fulfill the human’s every need; that is what Lust _does._ He satiates every human without even trying.

He’s not supposed to make him sad.

And this time, Lust can’t be mad at Roy Mustang for failing to satisfy him, because this time, he knows his human isn’t doing it to spite him.

He’s just sad. And Lust doesn’t know how to fix it.

He still gets the stories of Maes Hughes being an insufferable, cheerful-as-the-sun irritant daily. However, it doesn’t take Lust long to notice these are carefully chosen; Roy Mustang is very rarely a major player. He’s always one of many, whether it’s a group of cadets, or fellow soldiers, or wedding guests. He so rarely gets stories of just Maes and Roy, and when he does, they border on the ridiculous so much he suspects they are half made up on the spot. It’s just a coincidence, in the beginning-

But when it’s been weeks and he has no name for whatever it is between his human and this cripple other than a passing friendship at best, he knows he’s being lied to.

The day he brings it up is a long one. He’s been there with him for hours, and it’s been long enough since their dynamic has started to change that days like this have finally become commonplace. The stories still come with some cold sense of reluctance, with gritted teeth and averted eyes, but Lust knows his human well enough by now that he can see it is all an act- Roy Mustang still needs to feel like he’s resisting, still needs to feel like he’s being forced at gunpoint to tell him these things, still needs to feel in control and strong, so Lust lets him do it, but he knows the truth underneath the cold words and glares. He knows the truth, and now, he finds it adorable rather than infuriating, so he lets Roy Mustang play his stubborn little game and knows all the while his human is starting to need him.

Today, now, Roy has slipped from sitting up against his arm to lie in his lap now, neck supported by his ankles and head resting by his thighs. It’s hard for him to sit up for long periods, and- and, god, Lust just _adores_ him like this. Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, such a stubborn little threat his brothers had to take his hands, possessed with a defiance and strength that still burns bright after months of no hope- yet he’s worn him down so much he’ll be so helpless, so unresistant, so submissive in his arms to lie in his lap? He loves it, rare as it is, and it’s partially due to this display of openness and vulnerability that he chooses today to be the day he makes his move.

He waits patiently for Roy to finish the story of the time Maes had pranked their superior officer, back in the Academy. It’s one he’s heard variants of three times before, so he sits quietly and waits. He absently strokes the hair back from his forehead; Roy doesn’t react, doesn’t even blink, still staring distantly through and past him rather than at him. He waits until he’s finished and dropped back into silence, waiting for the next question, to broach this, most important of topics.

“So, Roy.” He smooths a hand down from his hair to over his cheek; Roy still doesn’t really look at him, but his face is still set in a sort of distant, nostalgic smile. That’s about to change. “I know all about Maes Hughes. ...What about you, though?” He strokes his face again. “How did _you_ know Hughes?”

Roy stiffens. It’s almost imperceptible, visually, but with him slumped in his lap like this impossible not to feel it. His face shifts, something about that smile becoming cold, brittle. His eyes go flat.

“...Hughes was just... someone that I knew.” He shrugs a little, staring very hard at the ceiling. “He was the kind of guy to be friends with everyone, and-“

“Now, now, Roy.” He pats his face again, this time a gentle little slap rather than a stroke. He smiles, showing his pointed teeth. “We both know that that’s a lie.”

Roy falls silent.

Lust has learned how to speak with silences, these months with Roy Mustang. Sometimes if he lets it stay quiet, sometimes if he doesn’t push, Roy will come back to him of his own accord. He sits quietly and he waits, burying his fingers absently in the dark hair. If he waits, then, he has finally learned, he can coax this human to eat right out of his hand.

He supposes he doesn’t really care about dominating this stubborn mule into his submissive pet any more, though.

The quandary that is Maes Hughes interests him, and the sadness of Roy’s smiles intrigues him, far more than his old game of simply making Roy his.

“We weren’t lovers,” Roy says at last. His voice is very, very quiet. “I know that you think we were, and we weren’t.”

Lust pauses. He nods a little, and leaves his cold hand against Roy’s warm face. “Okay,” he says, trailing a thumb through his hair. “Who were you, then?”

“...He was my best friend.”

And after this, there is nothing to be said.

* * *

He stays with his human that night.

He holds him while he sleeps, and when soft, meek, mewling whimpers start to make themselves known from his throat, he holds him tighter, shushing him quiet. The nightmares have become a daily occurrence, and they only seem to get worse, the longer they talk about Maes Hughes. But tonight, Lust holds him there and he manages, just barely, to coax the bad dream away before it can wake him up, and Roy is left sighing in his arms, still asleep only by a miracle.

“Maes,” he mumbles, voice slow and slurred. “...Maes...”

“Shh,” Lust whispers, and fights the very, very strong urge to simply clamp his hand over his mouth.

Maes. Maes, Maes... always _Maes._

It bothers him to no end that, even now, Maes Hughes still follows Roy to the one place where Lust can not follow him too, and continues to lay claim to his human.

Even now, Maes Hughes is there, and he can not be.

“Maes,” Roy says again. His voice sounds sad. “I’m... sorry...”

 _“Shh,”_ he tells him; this time, it’s a command. “Sleep, Roy.”

“...Maes,” he says, one final time, and falls still.

Slowly, his sleepy face slips into a smile. Lust thinks this is the first genuine expression of contentment he’s ever seen from him.

Lust can’t put a name to the feeling this looks gives him. It is most similar, however, to how it had felt to watch Gracia throw those flowers away, and he shuts his eyes just so he doesn’t have to see it.

* * *

Roy doesn’t like to tell him about him and Maes, very much.

Sometimes, though, when Lust is lucky, he wins those battles.

“I remember you eating your gun,” he begins with warmly, and smiles to Roy’s shock.

And sometimes, he dodges them all together, and brings it up all on his own.

Roy gives him a long, calculating look. Any traces of any earlier smile is now gone. He tilts his head, sighing softly through his nose, then smirks at long last, though Lust is not sure what about this situation is funny. “That’s... cheerful.”

Lust smiles, since Roy is not going to do it. “The most cheerful of memories, for the most cheerful of my friends,” he gibes, and tightens the arm around his human that’s keeping him upright. “What happened?”

Once again, Roy tilts his head, the true look in his eyes disguised by a cold, dark shield that dulls everything of his true intentions. He gives it several moments, seeming to be trying to best figure out how to respond. When he finally does, his voice is carefully light- but Lust knows him well enough by now to recognize the classic Mustang facade when he sees it. “That depends. What exactly do you remember?”

This time, it’s Lust turn to pause.

“...That happened more than once?”

And it is in this way that Lust learns that Roy had tried to kill himself twice, and Maes had talked him down from it both times.

He wonders, then, why Roy hasn’t tried to kill himself here.

He remembers how Envy had corralled Dr. Marcoh in line, with his threats to a whole village of human lives, and remembers the look on Roy’s face when he’d threatened Gracia and Elicia- such a stubborn, defiant human, such a submissive, willing pet when he threatens those that he loves- and realizes he already knows.

* * *

“Tell me something,” Lust says one day, and grins.

Roy grunts in his lap, his eyes-half lidded on his shadowed, hollow face. He hadn’t slept well again last night. “I’m always telling you something,” he returns sourly, but is lax and limp in his arms, and Lust nuzzles his face into his neck and hums, just because it’s fun.

“Tell me something again,” he purrs, and continues to hum. He pauses, searching his mind for something specific to say. He doesn’t really care what his human tells him, but he knows if he can ask a direct question outright, it’ll be easier for Roy to give him what he wants, so he tries. “Hmm.” He starts to stroke a hand through his ever lengthening hair; to his shoulders now, and starting to look better and better by the day, finally improving as a result of his constant affections. “I know... tell me, Roy- tell me. If Maes Hughes could walk in, _right now,_ and look at you... tell me. What would he say?”

Roy scowls.

“Well,” he begins after a long beat of silence. “That depends, Lust. Are we assuming he would skip the questions on just how he came back as a ghost? What about going after just who the hell you’re supposed to be, because I’m pretty sure that would take up a good hour or two of explaining.” He tilts his head enough to transfer his glare from the wall to him, dark, tired eyes piercing. “Are we also assuming he’d skip over filling me in on all the little details of your evil plot, whatever it is that he found out that made you all go after him?”

Ah, so Roy Mustang wants to play? Well, he can play. “No, Roy. No, we are not assuming that. I want to hear several hours of you droning on about the alchemical specifics of the impossibility of ghosts. Or are they impossible? I don’t know, I’m not an alchemist- why don’t you tell me, Roy.” He makes a show of settling back in for a long show, again tugging his fingers through his hair, flashing another grin. “Tell me allllll about the science of ghosts. Go ahead; I’m listening.”

The human gives him a cold little smirk, one that he loves to pieces. “Point taken, Lust, no reason to be an ass... and, there is no science behind ghosts. They don’t exist. Period.” He pouts, sinking back sulkily into his arms. “So it wouldn’t be a several hours of discussion. It’d be ten seconds of one. Which we just had.”

His human really has no idea how much talking like this makes him have even more fun, does he? “Always have to be Mr. Scientist,” he murmurs back, and again leans his cheek to his back.

It’s quiet for a few seconds.

“...Honestly, Lust?”

The levity has left his voice, and the smile is gone from his face.

Lust doesn’t really care what he’s talking about, so long as he just keeps talking. He nods, cheek moving against his shoulder blade, so that he can feel it.

Roy Mustang pauses, and again, there is a long moment of silence.

“If Maes could actually see me right now,” he says at last, “he would punch me in the face.”

Despite the words, there is still not even a hint of a joke.

Lust frowns, hugging him a little tighter. “Well, that’s rude of him. Really, it’s not as if you could’ve done all that much to stop us.”

But his human shakes his head, overgrown bangs again shadowing his eyes as his shoulders slump. He looks very old, and very, very tired. “No... no, I don’t mean for that. Maes wouldn’t blame me for being kidnapped, or- or for this.” He holds up his arms, then pats his useless legs with a sigh that sounds very bitter. “That’s not what I meant. But... he really would probably punch me. And then spend a good while yelling at me after it.”

The levity is still gone, but there is a slight smile on his pale face, now. Very slight, and not one of genuine happiness, but instead, the old pain of grieving nostalgia. It’s one of his sad smiles again, one of the ones that Lust can not stand, and he frowns, pressing his face a little more to Roy’s hair, just so he doesn’t have to see it. The human bows his head, long hair sweeping over his eyes, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone low, and almost cracks with pain. “He’d be very, very angry at me for giving up.”

This time, Lust can not stop himself from slipping a hand up, gently pushing at Roy’s face to get him to lean it closer to him. _No,_ he wants to say to that pain, _no, go away. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong on my human._ Roy is his- _nothing_ gets to hurt Roy except for him, and now that Roy has stopped fighting him, so, too, has gone any desire of Lust’s to see him in pain. “Once again, I fail to see how he has any right to be angry with you over that,” he says quietly, but Roy just shakes his head.

“Yes. _You_ do. Because you’re not him.” The words lack bite, and aren’t intended to hurt, but Lust feels his mouth slip into another frown, anyway. “Maes, he... always expected the best of me. I was never allowed to be weak, because he always knew I could do better than that. And if I tried not to, he’d make me damn well know it wasn’t acceptable. If he could look at me now... I let him die, and now, I’ve... I’ve let him down, too...” He trails off, and his heavy voice again seems to almost crack under the weight of his words. “If he could look at me now, I’m not sure whether he’d be more angry, or disappointed.”

Lust, once again, scowls.

He’s not sure how accurate his human really is... but he knows, in those heavy, miserable words, that Roy believes they are the honest truth.

“That’s rather harsh of him, don’t you think-“ he starts again, wanting only to cheer him up, but Roy cuts him off with a scowl of his own.

“No. I don’t. He wasn’t like that to be cruel, Lust.” Roy pauses, frowning even more severely. His voice becomes softer. “And you don’t get it, because you’re not like him. You want for me to be weak. You want me to be weak, so, for some strange, demented reason, you can take care of me. He wanted me to be strong for my own sake- because he knew I’d be happiest like that, and wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ever gave anything but my best. And... I guess it’s easier to be strong, when you have someone there refusing you the option to be weak.”

There’s several moments of silence, Lust unsure if there’s anything he can say to make this better while his human keeps his eyes down, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. “He... once told me, t-that... that he’d love me even if my best wasn’t anything more than crawling out of bed or the bottle, and that all I had to do was try. Tch... embarrassing idiot. Saying th-things like- l-like that...” He laughs harshly, and even though it seems as if he’s trying to save face, the sound is nothing but short and broken. “Never could stand it w-when he... started gushing l-like an embarrassing girl.”

Lust’s dead heart twinges again, and, before he’s even meant it, his arms have wound even tighter around Roy.

He gives it a few moments, though that’s just as much to give his human time as because he truly does not know what to say. He feels like he must say something, but right now, the only thing he can really feel is anger at Maes Hughes, for making his human feel like this- but he knows, has learned, that insulting the dead man is not the way to win over Roy’s favor. Roy is allowed to insult Maes. He is not. So he bites his tongue and sits quietly instead, saying nothing, waiting for the right words to come to mind and holding him.

“...So,” he goes on at last, and wraps his arms just a little more securely around him. His human still does not respond, not even so much as to look at him. “What would _you_ say to _him?_ If he were here and said those things to you... what would you say to him?”

Lust knows what _he_ would say to him, but that is rather beside the point, now, isn’t it?

Once again, his human is quiet for a long time.

“I... would tell him I’m sorry,” he says finally, and his voice is just as soft and strangled as before. Once again, he knows that these dark, grief-heavy words are nothing but the truth. “And then, I’d ask him if he has any idea how it feels to watch your best friend be put into the ground, and to know there’s nothing in that box they’re shoveling dirt on except a husk of rotting meat. ...and... and then, to...” He trails off yet again, and but this time raises one of his arms to, just barely, brush it against Lust’s. “To see...”

He doesn’t have to finish his sentence, for Lust to get it.

It’s quiet again, a short pause in which the only sound is his human breathing. Lust can feel his heart thud under his hands... _da-thump, da-thump, da-thump..._ and finds himself adjusting his hold a little, just enough to be closer to that heartbeat.

“Then,” Roy murmurs at length, “I’d ask him just what I’m supposed to do if I’m not allowed to be weak, because... because I really don’t have it in me to be strong anymore.”

After several moments, Roy just sighs, dropping his arm. “He’d probably just punch me again,” he murmurs, voice rough and steady again- dismissive, almost.

But he’s shaking again, and Lust does not let him go until he stops.

* * *

It’s easy to get stories of Maes being ridiculous.

It’s very hard to get stories of Maes being with Roy.

And it is damn near impossible to get the stories that he loves the most- those stories of Maes that mean the most to Roy, and he so rarely speaks of because he knows that still, after all this time, Roy thinks of it as a betrayal to his dead friend.

But sometimes- _sometimes-_ Lust wins, and Roy will tell him those things.

He will murmur to him about Gracia and Elicia and their husband and father, he will murmur to him about the most treasured and precious of his memories with his friend, and this, and he loves this more than anything else alive.

It’s when Roy finally trusts him with these stories that he knows he’s won as much trust as he is ever going to get.

“Maes was a giant goof before he got married,” he says softly, and Lust sits very still behind him, arms still wrapped around him. The human slowly reaches the stump of his arm up, touching his hand almost as if he wishes to hold it. “He was a giant, unbelievable goof. Gracia brought him down to earth a little, but, in his own way, he also put her up to the sky. He held her up on a pedestal in all the right ways and made her feel like an angel even when on her worst day of the year. She could’ve been eight months pregnant, down on the floor with morning sickness, and screaming at him to get out, and he could still tell you ten different ways that she was beautiful. Then Elicia was born, and he... he just had everything. He told me it was like he had everything that he’d never even known he’d wanted, and he’d never believed in his life that he could be so in love.”

Lust smiles.

He doesn’t remember Gracia and Elicia, not very well- but he does realize that Roy is right.

His human had been in love, the way he makes so many others fall in love with him, and he finds that he wants this love more than anything.

“And, what about you?” he murmurs. He bows head forward to press it to his shoulder, cheek to his neck, and finds himself wrapping his hand around the stump of his arm. This man belongs to him. Everyone that he wants loves him, that is how things work, and he will make this man his. Roy will love him, and in return he will protect him, and be what everything that he needs, and serve as his friend, and Roy will _love him._ “Where do you fit in with all of this?”

Roy goes quiet. He feels the human lean his head against his, and though he can hardly squeeze his hand back, Lust imagines he would like to. Beneath him, the human is warm and steady, a constant presence of the love his existence demands, just a few well-placed reaches out of his grasp, and Lust kisses his shoulder.

“...He gave me the first family I’d ever had,” he whispers at last, and that says everything he needs to know, about Roy Mustang and Maes Hughes.

Lust does not lift his head off his shoulder, and Roy does not turn to look at him. He sits quietly in his arms, and Lust sets about fitting him there even more firmly, situating him there in a way where he’s so close he can’t get away. Roy doesn’t fight the embrace. It almost feels as if he wants to be able to return it.

Finally, Roy shifts his head a little, not enough to meet his eyes but enough for him to feel the change. “Are you going to meet them? Gracia and Elicia?”

Lust hesitates. Roy doesn’t know of the days he spends following his human’s family; he’s kept it secret from him, and he intends to keep it that way. Though he supposes the question is valid, all the same; the closest he’s ever got to actually meeting those two is Gracia throwing his flowers away, and Elicia screaming at the very sight of him.

He thinks of it, of the idyllic reality Roy has painted for him. Him sliding so perfectly into the role of Maes Hughes, sleeping next to Gracia at night and taking Elicia to school in the morning, kissing his wife goodnight and his daughter goodbye. He thinks of how it really would be, with him taking Gracia and Elicia for his very own down to this underground prison, giving them cells of their own and fulfilling their every need so they have no choice _but_ to need him, to love him. He would be everything these pathetic humans could ever need. He would give them everything.

He thinks of Roy, how willing he is to provide for _his_ every need down here, and how sad his smiles stay, day by day by day.

“No,” he decides at last. He kisses Roy’s shoulder again, because he’s Lust. Because he’s supposed to. Because he can. “I think I probably shouldn’t entice myself, with what I can’t have.”

Roy loosens, and it’s only now that he realizes how stiff he was, because Roy’s relaxed now. He trembles in his arms, head bowed. When Lust starts to raise his head in question, Roy shakes his head at him again, sighing. “Don’t get me wrong. Gracia and Elicia would... I think they would love you, given time. You’re not- _him,_ but... you would try, wouldn’t you? You would try very hard to be what they needed. You’re a people-pleaser. You like giving people what they want.”

It’s not that he likes it, it’s who he is. He is Lust. He exists to be what people want and need. But he lets the comment pass, because Roy is close enough, he supposes, and he’s trying, and that’s all that matters.

“But... you’d cause them more pain than not,” Roy says, gently, like he’s giving him mercy by saying it softly. “You would hurt them. A lot.”

It’s true. They both know it.

Lust wraps himself more around him with a sigh. He closes his eyes, feeling this person he wants to make his own, and though he’s a very pale imitation to the family he barely remembers, on his own, he is enough for him.

Roy smiles at him, but his eyes hold all that tired pain of looking at one he’d used to love but can not anymore. “Maes wasn’t selfish,” and this, he says like a mercy again. “Maes was probably the least selfish person that I ever knew. He held himself at the lowest priority, and always worried more about everyone else before himself. He... hated himself, for a long time, after Ishval. He felt like he couldn’t live with what he’d done there. But he held himself together and smiled for us, because I needed him, and his family needed him, and as long as he kept us all right, that was his redemption. That was all that mattered to him.”

Then, Roy pauses, mind sidetracked by the story, eyes lowering to his lap. “I was a shitty friend. I knew he wasn’t okay, after the war, but I was too focused on my own mess to help him.”

Finally, Lust smiles.

“Maes didn’t think you were a shitty friend,” he promises, and can think of no better reward when Roy just turns his face towards him, presses it to the hollow of his neck and shoulder, and shuts his wet eyes.


	3. Over the Hills and Far Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!! <3

He can take Roy, and they can leave.

Greed left. Greed always leaves; every incarnation of his is faithless and is the first to leave Father. He’s shown it can be done. The sins can leave their maker, and Lust can take Roy from this place, and he can leave with him.

He thinks about it, some days.

Their Father’s plan is not one that he cares about. When he thinks about it, none of them really do. Greed has no interest in it, and has shown it, by leaving. Envy likes playing with humans, like a cat might a mouse. Gluttony knows no better; he is a child, he’s learned, such a child, a weapon that only understands how to destroy what he is aimed at. Sloth is given no choice; has never had a choice. They all have their reasons, one way or another; none of them care so deeply for their Father and his plan that devotion to him is why they stay.

None of them care about their Father’s plan. Nothing, really, is keeping Lust here.

He can take Roy, and he can leave.

He can take Roy, and they can leave together. He’ll take him, and he’ll grab Gracia and Elicia, and they’ll run far, far away from here, and live somewhere Father will never find them, and they’ll be a family, and they will love him, and he will have everything he ever needs. They can do this. They can run, and be happy.

One day, he tells Roy this.

Roy sighs.

“If you want to run, Lust, I won’t stop you. ...But I can’t go with you.”

Lust stares at him, bewildered and lost. “Why _not~?”_ he purrs, and he tugs, pulling the cripple back more securely back against him. “There’s no sense in you staying here!” When this does not work, he leans his face even closer, just close enough to purr at him and hum right in his ear. “”What, is there someone else out there that you want?” He’s not keen on bringing someone else into his family, but, well, if it’s what Roy wants- “Tell me who they are, and I can get them, too, and we can all run together-

“Lust,” Roy sighs again. He pushes the hand off his face as best he can, then scowls at him when all this does is dislodge it to his shoulder. “Lust, I can’t leave Amestris like this. I can’t just- just _leave_. I lost my right to live a peaceful life long ago; I have no freedom to turn my back and run just because I can. ...I don’t deserve the safety of hiding away, Lust, or the luxury of the life you’re offering me. My life is in Amestris, and if my country is going to die, I will stay here and fight with her to its death.”

Lust cocks his head; licks his lips. Roy is doing that thing he tends to do, that stubborn, illogical thing of his, when he fights a fight that he can not win, and is just stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. “And what, exactly,” he points out with a smirk, “are you going to do like this?”

The human hesitates. He raises his stumps of arms to stare at them, then pats at his useless, dead legs with a bitter, bitter smile. “Nothing, Lust,” he sighs at last. “I can do nothing.” The smile stretches from bitter into misery, and he bows his head. “I am useless now... that was your father’s intention. I’m not the Flame Alchemist anymore; I can’t perform alchemy. I’m not a soldier anymore; I can’t even stand. I can’t fight. ...But after all that I’ve done, I have no right- I _refuse_ \- to leave my country in her last fight.”

There are some days, he thinks, that he still really does not like Roy Mustang.

The human sits quietly for several moments, relaxed in his arms. He closes his eyes and leans his head against his shoulder; his hair is long now, much longer than he thinks it should be, and he buries his fingers in it, gently pushing it back from his forehead. “Maes would ignore you, and drag you out of here, and pick up Gracia and Elicia, and run all the way to some pretty, vacation-y beach in Creta where you all could be safe and happy forever,” he purrs, and Roy merely sighs.

“Perhaps,” he hedges softly, but by his voice, Lust doubts the veracity of it. “...But you’re not Maes, are you?”

And this one, at least, is true.

He is not Maes.

Roy blinks quietly up at him, and his eyes hold all of the pain and sadness he never says, but that Lust is slowly beginning to understand. “I’m never going to get out of here, am I?” he asks. “I am going to die.”

Once again, he speaks only the truth.

Once again, Lust has nothing to do but sit there with him in silence, and realize again that, even with all the power in the world at his fingertips, what he wants most will always be out of reach.

* * *

He leaves that night anyway, and he leaves Roy behind.

He doesn’t need Roy. Or perhaps he’ll come back for him, if he finds he does- but he can still save his wife and his daughter. Roy’s not the only one who belongs to him, Roy is not the only one he wants to see happy, and if Roy won’t cooperate with him, if he insists on staying behind to die in a fiery, sacrificial suicide that’ll accomplish nothing and save nobody-

If Roy denies him still, after all this time, then he will leave him to burn with his precious country, and he’ll take the rest of those that he needs away.

He leaves in the middle of the night, stopping for only a moment to listen to Roy’s quiet, disturbed sleep before he walks on ahead without looking back.

* * *

It’s not until they’re two hours out of the city, sitting silently in the luggage compartment of the overnight train, that Lust finally risks trying to explain himself.

Gracia and Elicia Hughes are there with him, huddled together in the dark. Their hands are bound, and their mouths, gagged; they sit there on a pile of suitcases, pulled away from him and clinging to each other like even a moment of separation will bring the end of the world. He hadn’t meant to scare them- it really pains him, just a little- but there are many necessary evils, of being a homunculus, and this is one of the smallest among them.

But, he’s decided they have been here long enough like this, and he gives Gracia a long, calculating look. She’s been crying on and off ever since leaving the city; her eyes are currently dry, but who knows when the waterworks will start up again. She stares at him in the darkness, and her eyes, like Roy’s, he can’t read- but with her, it’s because there’s so much pain in them there’s just not room for anything else.

She holds her daughter in her lap, pressing Elicia’s face into her stomach so she can’t even see him, and Lust doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or to love her even more.

“If I take your gag off,” he begins quietly, and a single claw stretches out from his hand, “will you scream?”

Very slowly, Gracia shakes her head.

She does tighten her arms around Elicia, and Lust thinks he may just lose one of his lives, if he even looks at her the wrong way.

So he stays where he is, and lets his claw grow to do the work for him. “Please don’t scream,” he says again, just before the weapon bites into the soft rope. “It will be such a pain to have to find a new train at this time of night.”

He frees her, first her hands, then her mouth. She does not scream.

Lust gives her several moments, watching as she nervously rubs her raw wrists, trying to both see to the wounds and not let go of her daughter. “You’re awfully frightened,” he points out at last, and settles deeper into his own pile of suitcase. “For someone who’s just seen their husband again, after so many months apart. I wasn’t expecting a welcome home kiss, but a hug would’ve been appreciated by now.”

Gracia holds Elicia even tighter; her wet eyes, glistening in the dark, do not soften. “I know you’re not my husband,” she says, very quietly- and her voice, miraculously, is strong.

He knew there was a reason he loved this woman.

“...Your eyes,” she continues, when his hard stare evidently forces the explanation out of her. “You don’t have his eyes. And... I have friends, who warned me I might someday see someone who looks like Maes, but with eyes like yours.”

Ah, yes.

His eyes.

The one difference, between him and Maes Hughes: his are purple.

And Maes’ weren’t.

“You have smart friends,” is all he says, and Gracia bows her head to her lap and shuts her eyes.

“...Can I untie my daughter now?” she asks at last, voice almost dull, but there’s an undercurrent of steel in there that she can’t even come close to hiding.

Lust grins. Protective over their offspring like a lioness to her cub; yes, he _knew_ there was a reason he loved her. How had he _ever_ mistaken her as mediocre? “Of course you can,” he allows; he’s not a barbarian, after all. “Just keep her calm. I can’t have either of you screaming; beyond that, I don’t mind what you do.”

Gracia hesitates, watching him very uncertainly, then just swallows and returns her attention to her daughter. She bends down close to her, whispering in her ear; he can’t hear what’s said, but, finally, after several seconds, he sees her nod. Gracia gently frees her child, first the gag, then her hands, and then she wraps her arms back around her, pressing her so close shecould never get away.

Elicia, however, does not share her mother’s fear.

Slowly at first, the child turns. She clings to her mother still, but she turns just enough to look at him; look at him with big, green eyes that have haunted him since the day he was born. She stands on her mother’s lap, even wrapped in her arms, little hands fisting in her dress- then reaches one out for him instead. “...Daddy?”

His breath catches.

Oh, dear god.

He _loves_ her.

But Gracia holds Elicia even tighter away from him at this small, trembling question, burying her face in her hair and cradling her in desperate grief. “No, baby,” she says, so soft he can hardly hear it at all, “that’s not Daddy. It may look like him, but it’s not, okay?” She reaches a hand up to stroke through her hair; still uneven, from that boy at her school. She’s crying, now, again.“Daddy wouldn’t hurt us like this.”

Lust sighs. “I really didn’t want to hurt you, either, you know,” he points out, almost poutily. Why must these humans always assume the worst of him? He’d never hurt them- either of them. “I’m only trying to help you here. Honestly. But you wouldn’t really have gone with me if I’d just knocked on your door and asked, now would you have?”

Gracia’s glare is so dangerous Lust finds himself sinking back an inch into the shaking suitcases.

“What do you want with us?” She squeezes her daughter; the train screeches it’s way into the beginning of a long turn. It’s so loud her words are almost lost, but not quite- and the fire in them could never be smothered. “What are you going to do to us?”

He sighs. He can understand her hostility, he really, truly can- but he would like to just skip this part, the painful winning over of stubborn humans, so they can get to the paradise he’s making for them. It had taken months with Roy; is that how it’s going to take with these two, as well? “I’m just taking you somewhere safe, with me. That’s not Amestris anymore.” He pauses, trying to find the self-restraint- but then he can’t anymore, because he’s spent too long as a sin condemned only to a despairing hell and he can’t wait to rush to his heaven. “I understand this is all very confusing right now, but trust me, I only want to help you. I do! You and Elicia. It may not make sense here, but all I’m doing is taking you somewhere that you’ll be safe, and with me.”

He stills for a moment, picturing it in his mind- oh, he can picture it all. A sunny house on a hill, a home far, far away from Amestris, a home somewhere there are no homunculi and he can protect them all. Gracia’s his wife and he fulfills her every need and want; there’s nothing for her to do but exist and be loved, because she loves him and that is all a sin could ever ask for. Elicia is perfection defined; if he and his brothers are the seven deadly sins then she is each of the seven heavenly virtues in one tiny, beautiful form. She’ll run and play and be happy and he will protect her for her entire life, because she is _his,_ and nothing with ever take her away from him. Roy-

Oh, of course Roy will be there. He’ll take Gracia and Elicia there first, get them settled, then he’ll go back for Roy; his family, his dream, his heaven requires it. Roy will be there. He...

Well, his brothers have already taken too much from him, things Lust can not give back- but that’s okay. This is fine. Roy’s got fight in him; he can learn to live this way, and with him there to keep them all safe, it will be fine. Roy will be safe and loved and happy with him and his family. He’ll carry him out each day to sit and watch Elicia play, and he’ll help him eat and sit and dress just like now, except- except Roy’ll be happy, because he’ll have everything he could ever need out there, and he’ll be happy for the first time since Lust has ever known him.

They’ll all be happy, and this is all he asks for.

Lust exists to be loved, after all. He is meant to be loved, because he gives humans what they want- and they all want, at the end of the day, is happiness.

“I’ll give you all a home again,” is what he finally says aloud.

This is all he can give them, and, in what he’s finally learned of these humans, he knows that’s all they really want.

The humans, however, do not melt to this promise like he had hoped they would.

Gracia stares at him harder, glassy eyes still wet but molded into an impenetrable shield that won’t give even an inch. She grips her daughter closer, both arms wrapped so tight he thinks he might end up having to pry his daughter from her cold, dead hands. There’s misery in her, but the same stubborn fight he knows so well from Roy Mustang- a strong, unyielding defiance and strength of character he knows will never just yield.

Not to him.

And, Elicia...

She starts to cry.

“Mom?” she whispers, fighting to stand up on her lap again. Gracia hugs her even closer, but this does not stop the child from reaching out. She looks back over her shoulder at him, scrubbing at her flushing face and staring to him with hopeful eyes. “Mom, can we go with him? He sounds nice. He s-sounds like... like Daddy.”

He reaches out a hand before he even knows what he’s doing. Yes, he’s Daddy. He’s whatever she needs from him. He’s Lust; his whole _existence_ is humans needing him. He can be whatever Elicia needs, he can be Maes Hughes, he can be anything she needs because that is _who he is,_ he-

Gracia hugs her daughter even closer again, one hand slipping up to turn her face away and cover her eyes. “No, we can’t,” she says, very quietly. “He is not Daddy. We’re not going anywhere with him, Elicia.”

Gracia looks to him, then, eyes fierce at first as if to challenge him to prove her wrong- but at the sight of him, she stops.

It takes him several moments of staring to realize she’s read the anguished desire in his eyes, read him easier than Roy ever has, her hard and unyielding stare melting into one of gentle confusion, and Lust jerks away, forcing his gaze off of her. He stares off into the darkness, refusing to meet her eyes again, but Gracia is not a stupid woman, and she’d read more in that one look than he had ever intended for her to know.

“...You’re not my husband,” she says again, slowly, speculatively. For the first time, there is something in her voice other than cold anger. “But... you’re not just- one of those things, are you? Those things that killed him. You’re more than that... who- who _are_ you?”

This really would’ve been much, much simpler if Roy had just agreed to come along, and done all the explaining for him.

“I am not your husband,” he agrees carefully. _Yet._ “But I was made from him. And I will be him for you, if that’s what you want.”

And with this, he realizes he has no choice except to tell her everything.

He does.

It takes perhaps half an hour, his voice the only other intruder into the night, barely audible at times underneath the noise of the train. He tells her what he can, as clearly as he can, though he leaves Roy mostly out of it. He mentions the man only as much as necessary; he doesn’t think telling her all about the cripple he’s left behind will do much to win her over to his side, and it doesn’t matter much in the long run, anyway. Once he’s gotten Gracia and Elicia settled out of the country, he’ll go back for Roy. His absence now is only a temporary setback, at most.

He glosses over Roy, and glosses over the Promised Day. All he tells her is what she needs to know: Amestris is about to become a warzone, and he is taking her and her daughter out of there before it’s too late.

He tells her he can be everything that she wants or needs, and hopes, hopes with everything he has, that that will be the end of that.

Gracia watches him, her eyes long since gone dry. She’s still holding her daughter, though from here he can’t tell if Elicia’s fallen asleep or her mother just isn’t letting her turn back around to look at him. She’s not looking at him like most humans do, with desire and adoration, but at least it’s not with the hate and defiance Roy used to- she’s willing to listen to him. He can do this. He can take her as his own.

“...You said...” she begins cautiously, “that you would give me whatever I want.” She hesitates, then drops her hand down as if to cover her daughter’s ears again. Elicia, too, is silent, and whether by desire or because her mother is not giving her a choice has hidden her face again, curled up in her lap like a wounded kitten. “Well, what if what I want isn’t you?”

It’s Lust’s turn to stop.

No. No, no.

That... is not how this is going to work.

“I understand if you’re reluctant,” he starts. “Roy was too, at first. But once you get to know me-“

“I want my husband.” It’s simply an honest declaration of fact, not a longing plea or a anguished expression of sorrow. She sits up straighter amongst the suitcases, still cradling Elicia in her arms, and though she’s starting to cry again now her eyes hold steady, as strong as the woman he remembers in his dreams. “And that’s not who you are. So unless you can bring him back to life, you’re not what I want.”

 _No._ “That’s how Roy was at first, but now-“ These stupid humans, always being so stubborn with him, always trying to fight him even though he exists to be everything that they could ever need- “You and Elicia can- can-“

“Elicia doesn’t need a substitute,” she snaps, and the fire that hadn’t been present for herself now leaps to life for the sake of her child. “She needs her real father, and you can’t give her that.”

“You’re being unreasonable!” He looks down at the little girl, now almost distraught; if Gracia would just hand her over to him he could prove himself- he’s all they need, he is all they could _ever_ need. If she’d just give him a chance, like Roy has, she would understand. “You want your husband. And how am I not him?” Because he’s not Maes Hughes, he is _better_ than Maes Hughes, but he’ll show her that in time; all she needs to understand now is he is what she wants. What she _needs._ He is _everything_ that this family needs- and they are everything that he wants. “I have all his memories, I know all his life, I have his body, what else could you possibly-“

“You’ll give me what I want?” she breaks in, not even giving the words a chance, not even giving _him_ a chance. She cuts through his protest with a voice akin to steel, not allowing him even the slightest hint of patience or understanding. She’s made her choice, has already made her choice about him, and in her mind, there’s nothing that can be done to change it. “All right. Then let my daughter ago. I’ll stay with you if that’s what you want from me, but I want you to take my daughter somewhere safe and let her go.”

Lust stares.

No...

Simply, in a word, _no._

Absolutely none of this is right. That is not how this is meant to go. Yes, he’ll give them anything they want- but what they want has to be him! And why shouldn’t it be? He’s not keeping anyone with him against the will! They _want_ to be with him! She’s reacting just like Roy had; he’s Maes Hughes in every detail, and he’s trying, and he deserves, requires, _demands_ their attentions and affections and desire- but all these stubborn humans care about is insisting upon who he is _not._ No... no, this is even _worse_ than Roy. At least Roy had had something of an excuse, after the way his brothers had taken and hurt him- but Gracia has nothing! He’s never harmed a hair on her head, and never would! _All_ he wants is to be there and give her _anything_ that she could ever want or need. She’ll be the happiest she has ever been, and he’ll be her heaven. He should not be begging her for the privilege- she should be on her knees, sobbing for him to stay with her!

“I’m- Gracia, I’m not going to hurt you, either of you, do you understand? I’m doing all this to help you!” What is it these humans; why do they refuse to understand this? “You don’t get it- she _has_ to be there. All of you do! You, and her, and Roy- I’ll be what you need, you understand? I’m everything you humans could _ever_ want! You are _mine!_ ”

He is theirs, and they are his, and that is how this is.

Roy is stubborn, and Gracia is stubborn too, and maybe that is why Maes loved them so much. But that’s okay. He’s worn Roy down and he’ll do it to Gracia, too. It’s that simple. That is just what will happen, because there is no other way. She’ll understand, in time. She’ll finally get it, and they’ll all live safely away from Father, and they’ll love him because that is what humans _do,_ and they’ll never need anything or anyone but him.

Except...

Gracia’s still looking at him, and her wet, broken eyes say _no._

And Elicia's still crying, too, and he realizes- a bit too late, at that- that that is all something Maes Hughes would’ve never said.

“I...”

Lust turns his gaze away. He looks around the cluttered, dark compartment, the three of them all sprawled on luggage and the two humans shivering as the loud train screeches its way across the countryside. He looks at Gracia and Elicia; at the sliced ropes and gags lying on the floor around them, at his daughter’s tears, at his wife’s steady, burning defiance of the same breed as Roy’s.

He remembers when he told Roy he’d never contact them, because he would only hurt them.

He had been right.

He’s hurt them.

But... but it’s all for the greater good, isn’t it? What does it matter if he’s hurt them _now,_ at the end of the day, he’s bringing them to safety, he’ll be what they need, it’s all necessary to get them all the ending he, they, deserve. There’s no way around it, but, it’ll be all right in the end, it will...

“Mommy,” Elicia whimpers. “M-mommy...”

And Gracia turns away from him, turns all the attention he’s supposed to deserve away from him without even a second thought. The defiance and hatred erases away like it had never even existed, tears returning to her eyes and love shining in them- love, that’s not for him. She bends over her crying child, wrapping both arms tight around her, holding her, protecting her, from _him,_ and kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’s okay, don’t be scared... Mommy’s not going to let anything happen to you.”

And Lust is left with nothing to do but watch.

Because in that family there, that tightly-knit, perfect family, there is no room for him.

Gracia calms her child slowly, stroking her still uneven hair and shushing her until she’s quiet. Even when Elicia has at last quieted down, the mother looks no calmer herself. Her hair obscures her eyes, shadowing her tear-streaked face, but her lips tremble, and there’s devastation and grief etched into every broken line of her face.She wipes a trembling hand along her cheek, then raises it to her own wet eyes, brushing away her tears. “...Homunculus,” she says quietly, and her voice almost, almost cracks. She raises her gaze to him, and her eyes are sad the same way Roy’s smiles are. “You claim to be able to be Maes for me. You say that’s what you want- and I think I believe you. ...Well, do you think Maes would’ve ever done this to us?” There’s a brief moment of silence, and she squeezes her daughter even tighter. “Do you?”

Elicia hiccups again, scrubbing at her little cheeks with her little fists. She curls tighter around her mother, sparing him just one frightened glance before burying her face back against Gracia’s side. His wife just sits there to watch him, gaze nothing but cold, and hurt etched into every fiber of her being.

 _Maes Hughes was not selfish,_ Roy had told him one day, lying in his arms and wishing for, just as his family does now, a man that’s no longer alive to be there instead.

Maes Hughes wasn’t selfish.

And, in forcibly taking and dragging his family to his own personal heaven, he realizes that is what this is.

And this is why he can never be what they need. He wants for them to be happy, he wants for them to be loved and love him back, he wants nothing but the world at its best for them-

But in what they want, he is not there.

And he can never be.

* * *

As it turns out, heaven is an ending you get when you deserve it.

It’s not the ending intended, for a sin.

* * *

Lust breaks them out of the train as they roll through a village just south of the border.

They land in an Aerugonian farm field, standing in waist high grass aside the train tracks as they watch their transport roll away. Gracia and Elicia stand a few feet behind him; he can hear them breathe softly under the crickets and wind just as easily as he can the loud screech of metal on the train tracks. He doesn’t face them for a moment, instead simply staring back towards Amestris and the responsibilities he doesn’t want, but has no choice but to shoulder.

He stands that way for a long time, until the train is long gone, and he’s left alone.

Alone except for his humans.

His humans, who can’t bear to admit he exists.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks at last. He does not face them. “Once I leave, I’m not coming back.”

It’s true, for better or for worse. Once he’s made it back to Roy, he will never see Gracia or Elicia again.

“I’m sure.” Gracia hesitates, now- hesitates the way she hadn’t, to look at him and tell him he’s not wanted. Her voice turns low and thick with pain. “You, and Roy... I... I’ll never s-see... either of you again. Will I?”

“...No. You won’t.”

Behind him, Gracia chokes on a tiny sob, and he hears Elicia follow her, a second after.

Lust hesitates himself, then turns around. He’s silent and graceful in the grass; the two humans shiver and cry, trembling in the wind; he can barely even see Elicia through the grass. He watches then there for a moment, sees the dying remains of any dream he’s ever had vanishing in the night.

He throws caution to the wind, and for the first time in his existence, ignores what a homunculus is meant to do, and acts as Maes Hughes.

He gets on his knees, spreads his arms wide, and tells his wet-eyed, sniffling daughter, “Hug Daddy goodbye, sweetheart.”

It’s something he feels he has done a million times better. So familiar to the bits and pieces of him left over from a life that was never his, not made by Father; he remembers it all so well he could’ve done it in his sleep. It’s not who Lust is, it’s who Maes Hughes is-

And the line between the two has never been so distinct.

Elicia stares at him.

Her eyes overrun with wet tears and despair, and with one tiny whimper, she presses her face back into her mother’s leg.

And, that’s that.

Slowly, Lust lowers his arms. The human smile on his face dies, and the dead, still heart of a homunculus takes over. “...I see,” he says flatly. And he does. He looks at the little girl, and he stands, raising his eyes away from her to never look back. He presses his hand to his stomach in a tiny bow of goodbye, formal and professional to the fullest, and keeps his eyes lowered as he bids farewell. “I wish you, then, all the luck and happiness left in this world... Mrs. Hughes.”

And with this, he turns his back, and he walks away.

He only makes it as far as the train tracks.

Gracia Hughes latches onto him in a hug that is the tightest he has ever been held.

Her arms are as tight as a vise, one around his waist and one clutched around his heart. Her front is pressed to his back, her face, his shoulder, and he can feel the crown of her head digging into his spine, so close each hitched gasp is felt through his shirt. She clutches onto him tighter than he’s ever been held before- and she sobs.

She stands there, holds him to her, and sobs.

Lust can do nothing but let her.

He waits while the tears soak through his shirt. She doesn’t speak; he thinks perhaps that she’s crying too hard to say a single word. No... all she does is hold him- but perhaps, it is he holding her, because she feels so weak, limp, and broken that if he weren’t there to hold her up, she’d be sobbing on her knees. She’s against him and sobbing her broken heart out and holding him so tight he just almost feels human.

Gracia never speaks. She never has the strength to. She just stands there and cries, and Lust just stands there and lets her.

When her arms finally loosen, he can still hear her crying, and wonders how little like Maes Hughes he really is, that he can stand there and hear her cry for him like this and not turn around to hold her back.

“I t-think...” she chokes out at last, sniffling, distraught, and _ruined,_ “...I think that y-you should go. ...Before I change my mind and ask you to stay.”

And he’s Lust.

He exists for humans to love him- and in return, he gives them what they need.

He turns back around, one last time.

Gracia’s not looking at him; her eyes are shut tight, actually, as if she’s terrified that if she sees him she won’t be able to go through with this. Her flushed cheeks are damp, shoulders still hitching with each broken gasp of a breath, and she holds herself now, arms wrapped just as tight around her own chest as they’d been around his. She’s shaking and sniffling, crying so hard it’s a wonder she can breathe at all, and in contrast to that steady woman from the train who’d held her daughter from him and been sure with every word, this one is one wrong word away from tumbling over the edge and breaking here and now at his feet.

He walks forward, and kisses her forehead.

“Goodbye, Gracia,” he murmurs into her hot skin, and brushes her soft hair back.

He kisses her for Lust.

When he runs, vanishing into the night and leaving his family behind, it is for Maes.

He doesn’t look back.

all art by the lovely [maeshughesofficial](https://maeshughesofficial.tumblr.com/)

* * *

He goes back to Roy that night, and slips into bed behind him so silently his human does not even stir from his slumber.

He goes back to Roy for Maes, and he holds him now, wraps him up securely in his arms to never be let go again, for Lust. Roy sighs, whuffing blearily into the dark, and Lust is powerless to do anything but shut his eyes tight and press his lips to the back of Roy’s neck.

Holding him there, his back still wet and cold from Gracia’s tears, listening to this fragile, defenseless human breathe, it is now that he finally understands.

He was once Maes Hughes. A human who loved fiercely, and was loved in return.

He is now Lust. He exists to be loved- but he’s capable of it, too, and he loves just as much as he receives. He loves his family, who he can never have, and he loves Roy, who loves the person he’d used to be too much to love him back.

But he loves them, and there is nothing he can do to save them.

 _“And the way for us sins to be happy, is to embrace who we are, and go after what we want,”_ Greed had told him, a night that feels a century ago.

Well, he’s embraced who he is, and he’s gone after what he wants.

It’s gotten him a family who will never be his, and man who is condemned to die.

He is Lust. He exists to be loved.

And he has never felt so alone.

  
all art by the lovely [maeshughesofficial](https://maeshughesofficial.tumblr.com/)

* * *

That night, he lets himself dream for the first time in months.

He dreams of his sunny house on the hill, for the last time.

* * *

The eclipse approaches.

Roy doesn’t know. He doesn’t talk to Roy about such things, and Roy doesn’t pressure him to; he suspects the man does not want to know. But he also suspects that Roy is aware, on some level, of what is coming for him. He sleeps more, and talks less. He grows more and more content with sitting there in Lust’s arms in silence, and he screams himself out of sleep less, though he continues to quietly sob Maes’ name in the dark in many, many dreams. It’s as if he knows, somehow, the fate that is coming for him, and knows all he can do is wait for it with open arms, and this scares him more than he has words for.

Lust doesn’t think his situation is that different than Roy’s, really.

* * *

It is a week before the Promised Day, one short, precious, final week, that he enters Roy’s cell empty-handed, and smiles at him.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he announces.

Roy smirks.

“I don’t see flowers or chocolates, Lust.”

‘Yes, perhaps because I’m a tad more romantic than that~” he sing-songs, and lifts Roy up into his arms.

His surprise is the roof of military HQ.

By the look on the human’s face as they step out of the building and into the cool night air, he knows this was the right choice.

“I figured you haven’t been outside in almost a year, now,” he says, shrugging easily. “Humans like being outside, don’t you? Guessed it was the least I could do for ya, you cad,” and the look Roy gives him is everything he has ever wanted.

The least he could do for him, in this one week they have left.

They sit on the very edge of the roof. Or, Lust sits, and holds Roy there in his lap. It’s difficult, almost impossible for the human to sit up by himself, and though Lust could very easily catch him if he falls, he doesn’t want this worry to be on mind tonight. Roy seems to understand, because he doesn’t protest, and merely allows Lust to put his arms around him and embrace him on the edge of the roof, wind ruffling his hair and making him shiver. But he looks happy, all the same.

For the first time, Lust has made him happy.

He exists to make humans happy.

It’s supposed to be easy- and, he supposes, sitting there on the dark edge of the roof, this cool night air the only gift he can gift, it really isn’t so hard after all.

“Thank you, Lust,” Roy says quietly, so quiet and choked with emotion it’s barely coherent, but Lust understands. He strokes his long hair, and he smiles.

“You’re welcome.”

They sit there awhile, Roy silent and staring out over his city and his home. Lust doesn’t know how long it’s been when the man hesitantly turns his head just enough to meet his eyes. He raises an arm, touching Lust’s hand with his wrist. “I’m going to ask you for something,” he begins, and Lust can’t help but laugh.

“All right.”

Roy watches him, dark eyes unreadable in the low light. “I know it’s not likely either of us are going to survive... what’s coming. But, if you do, Lust. ...Could you track down someone, and pass along a message for me?”

The answer is no, no, and no. Lust doubts he and his siblings will survive the Promised Day, even if their Father wins. And even if they do survive, he doesn’t want to look for any humans besides those that belong to him, and he most certainly doesn’t want to pass along any dying message of Roy Mustang’s. But he nods anyway, brushing the hair back from his forehead, and watches as his human turns his head away again, face cast in that tired pain he knows so very well.

“Track down Riza Hawkeye, and tell her that... I am sorry I couldn’t be what she saw for me. Thank you for everything you gave me, and I want nothing more than for her to be happy.”

The cold wind blows again, tossing Roy’s dark hair over his dark eyes, and Lust pauses.

“Who is Riza Hawkeye?” he asks quietly, and is rewarded with the same saddened sort of smile he gets whenever he talks about Maes.

“Someone who could’ve been everything to me, if our lives had gone differently.”

Lust touches his hair again, gently pushing it away from his eyes to touch the cold skin. “If our lives had gone differently,” he repeats softly, and there’s no need for Roy to say anything else.

There’s a long moment of quiet. He leaves his hand on Roy’s forehead and hair and follows his gaze out over Central, Roy’s home and Lust’s- place of residence, if that. He clears his throat, hugs Roy close against his stomach and wonders how wrong it is for someone so dead to hold someone so alive. “In the spirit of asking for things, Roy.”

Roy smirks again. “I’m not so sure any favor you’d ask would be in my power to grant, homunculus.”

“Don’t call us that,” he interjects breezily. “It’s rude.” He doesn’t bother to look down at him, and doesn’t think he’d find Roy watching him if he did. “In, as you said, the unlikely event that one of us survives this. In the spirit of favors, and message-passing.”

The words stick hesitantly in his throat, freezing there like syrup and molasses, and he swallows tightly, trying to find a way to force them out.

“...Could you track down my family, and- ...his... family. ...tell them, that...”

Tell them what?

He wants to say that he loves them, but isn’t sure what truth there is in those words. He doesn’t know how much of what he feels for them is Maes’ memories, and he doesn’t know them well enough to sort it out. They belong to him? Well, yes, they do, whether they know it or not, but there’s no sense in telling them this. Humans have a different definition of ownership than homunculi. They don’t like being owned. He wishes he could’ve gotten to know them better? Well, yes, again, perfectly true, but that is such a lame last message there’s no use in giving it.

_Maes Hughes is not selfish._

He sighs, and strokes a hand through Roy’s hair again.

“Tell them that Maes loved them,” he says at last.

His reward is, after several long and slow seconds of slow and shocked blinks, another smile.

“Maes would approve,” Roy tells him gently, and this is all they need to say.

Roy huddles up a little more in his lap, curling into himself as best as he can. He thinks his human really would probably be warmer off sitting somewhere not pressed up against a dead body, but Roy is a stubborn man who doesn’t like to do what’s easiest for himself, and there’s no point in trying to get him to warm up elsewhere. He leaves his cold hand in his hair, letting the wind brush the dark, soft strands over it, and together they look away at Central City for the last time.

He starts humming again, habit more than anything else.

Roy shivers again.

“...S-shut... shut your eyes, L-Lust.”

The low voice, thick with something close to tears, and its request, twinge his dead heart.

“...M-Maes... had green eyes,” Roy gasps after a heartbeat, his voice thick and wet- but Lust had never needed an explanation.

Maes had green eyes. _And you don’t._

Because he is still Lust, and not Maes Hughes.

And the humans he loves want Maes Hughes.

_Maes Hughes is not selfish._

“Okay,” he says softly, and shuts his eyes.

A heaven’s ending isn’t for homunculi, anyway.

But Roy is not done yet, and he feels the stump of his wrist come to his arm, the way Roy does when he wants to touch him, but can’t. “That song,” he mumbles, and he still sounds like he’s about to cry. “You hum it a lot. ...Do you have any idea what it is?”

Startled, unsure, he shakes his head. No. No, he has no idea; he’s never even thought about it before. “What does it-“

“It’s... your daughter’s lullaby.”

Oh.

After a long, long pause, he keeps his eyes closed, and he continues to hum.

He can see Gracia and Elicia, and he can feel Roy. It is everything he could ever ask for, and everything that he can never have.

It’s minutes later, and he still hums, because it’s what Roy wants, and his eyes are still closed, because it’s what Roy needs, that he feels the precious human in his lap turn, and for the first time, he wraps his arms around him, and hugs him.

His stomach, where Roy has pressed his face to him, feels wet, and Lust says nothing.

Lust gives him as long as he can. He gives him silence, and his eyes shut, and everything that he can for as long as possible. It is the least he can do, it is _all_ he can do, and he gives it until he feels the sun just beginning to warm his dead skin and Roy’s quiet tears fade into silence. He waits until he can wait no more to wrap his arms further around Roy, gripping his worthless arms and useless legs, and prepares to stand.

He’s almost not surprised at all, when Roy stops him.

“Lust. Wait.”

He keeps his eyes closed; this time it’s not at all for Roy’s benefit, but his own. “I have to take you back,” he whispers, and he doesn’t intend for it to come out harsh anyway, but it does. “They’ll notice that you’re gone soon, R-“

“Open your eyes.”

He goes silent and speechless, for the third time this night.

Then, after a heartbeat of hesitation, he does.

Roy’s looking at him.

The human raises an arm, again touching him the only way he can. He stares up at him, and his eyes are unreadable; indescribable. He stares at his purple, purple, not green eyes, and he is silent, and he just _stares_ -

And then, Roy Mustang gives him a small smile, and tells him, “Thank you, Lust,” and he presses his damp face back into his side.

And for the first time this night, he knows Roy is not talking to Maes.

by the lovely adys (Ao3 guest)

* * *

The Promised Day comes.

He carries Roy in his arms again, because the universe loves irony.

His eyes will stay open today.

“Lust,” Roy says quietly as he carries him down the dark halls. His face is calm; serene. He has made his peace with this. “Do you know what I’m going to ask you to do?”

Lust knows.

He’s known for a while.

“Yes,” he whispers, and Roy nods, without a trace of a smile.

“Good.”

Roy doesn’t ask him, because he doesn’t need to.

* * *

The other sacrifices are already gathered. The Fullmetal Alchemist stares when Lust enters the room, and he begins to scream when his eyes land on the man in his arms, screaming _what are you doing?!_ and _Hughes, Hughes, STOP_ and _FIGHT BACK, DAMN YOU, MUSTANG_. Alphonse Elric forgoes words and launches at him with everything he has, but no one is a match for Father, and no threat even comes close to harming a hair on his head. Izumi Curtis and Van Hohenheim fight with the other homunculi, but it is almost sad, the pitiful struggle they bring, and Lust does not watch.

There’s no need to.

He lies Roy Mustang down where’s he told. He ignores Fullmetal screaming at him, and he ignores Father’s soliloquy behind him, and he ignores Pride’s slippery, slithery threats. He looks Roy in the eyes as, one by one, his useless limbs are secured, and the transmutation circle is drawn.

He stands back when he’s told, and touches Roy one last time.

“Keep your eyes open,” Roy says, very, very softly, and he smiles- just for him.

And Lust does what he does best, and gives his human what he wants.

He looks him in his eyes until the very end.

Alchemy lights up the room, blindingly bright and horrifically final. Roy’s screams join Fullmetal’s. Pride laughs.

And Lust takes a single step forward, whips the claws of his hand out, and stabs his crippled, fragile, defiant, beloved human through the heart.

He looks Roy in the eyes, and he never stops- not even when his eyes become dead.

It is seven minutes before the eclipse. There is no time to find another sacrifice, and Pride lacks the strength to force another into human transmutation. There is no fifth sacrifice, there is no other option, there is no other anything. Roy Mustang was to be the fifth sacrifice, and now, their fifth sacrifice is dead.

Father screams.

Pride is there, pinning him, Wrath is on top of him, stabbing him, there are screams of _betrayal, traitor, liar, what have you done, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE_ , and Father is there to rip him apart limb from limb, not punishment but rage, not justice but agony, not assimilating his stone but grinding the life out of him soul by soul, and Lust lets him.

He knows, in his last moment alive, Roy loved him.

There is nothing to fight for.

Twenty-two seconds after Roy dies, Lust dies with him.

* * *

He was Lust the Lascivious.

He existed to be loved.

He was.


End file.
